Alien Capitalism Ver the Past Three Centuries, Oplanet Earth First Turned Into a Factory, and Later on Into a Labo- Ratory

Home , Kardashev scale

VOICES Bureau d’études (p.02) • Keith A. Spencer (p.03) • Špela Petric (p. 04) • WORDS Alienology (p.02) • Imperial anthropomorphism (p.03) • Teratope (p.04) • Phy- Ewen Chardronnet (p. 05 & 19) • Aliens in Green (p. 06 & 24) • Donna Haraway (p.09) • toteratology (p.04) • Xenobiology (p.05) • Shadow life (p.05) • Photoautotrophy (pp.06-07) • Helen Hester (p.10) • Émilie Notéris (p.12) • Konrad Becker (p.16) • Pablo de Soto (p.17) Chthulucene (p.09) • Inhabitability (p.09) • Xenofeminist Ecologies (p.10) • Alien Citizens (p.13) • • Eugene Thacker (p.18) • Alejandra Pérez Núñez (p.20) • Matteo Pasquinelli (p.21) Xeno Capital (p.14) • Algorithmic Terror (p.16) • Regeneration (p.17) • Oil Cults (p.18) • Gnostic •Deborah Danowski & Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (p.22) Anthropos (p.19) • Word Virus (p.20) • Machinic Cognition (p.21) • Perspectivism (pp.22-23) n°5 The Laboratory Planet 2016 • 71Th year since 1945 Why are we working for our own Obsolescence? Xenopolitics

of the Anthropocene 24 pages # 2 euros www.laboratoryplanet.org

OF A WORLD BECOMING :ALIEN:

Research hypotheses on Capitalism aims and genesis alien capitalism ver the past three centuries, OPlanet Earth first turned into a factory, and later on into a laboratory. The Laboratory Planet doc- uments this transformation. alien The Anthropocene debate aims Evolution of HUMAN SPECIES POPULATION Fertilizer consumption Computer Power / Cost to date the moment when human 1000 The Laboratory Planet n° 5 7 Mac II Power Tower 180e 6 capitalism300 1 IBM PC species, or part of it, started to 5 250 Apple II 1/1000 Whirlwind 4 200 IBM 704 Univac Eniac become a significant driving force 3 150 Colossus 1/million IBM 7040

2 100 MIPS per $1000 (1997 dollars) Burroughs Class 16 1 (million) 50 1/billion Univac of major and irreversible terres- Zuse-1 people (billion) 0 0 trial environment transformation. tonnes of nutrients 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 Hardly able to figure out an Strategic nuclear NON HUMAN SPECIES ExtinctionS weapons stockpile ozone depletion earthly human project unity leads 60,000 20,000 70 50,000 60 15,000 to extend reflexion on this trans- 40,000 50 40 30,000 10,000 USA+USSR 30 formation real agents. This investi- 20,000

5,000 column ozone 20 gation states the probability than 10,000 Risk of climatic catastrophe % loss of total 10 Extinction number s 0 0 0

this major transformation may be 18001830 1860 1900 1920 1950 1980 2010 1940 1960 1980 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000 The productivity revolution the fruit of a xeno power, alien Concentration of Manufacturing jobs share UFO sightings US banking system vs. manufacturing output capitalism, denying present and 900 40 35% 125 Industrial Production : Total assets of top three US banks 30 manufacturing 100 600 30 as % of total commercial past Earth humankinds ontologies. banking sector assets 25 75 400 20 20 50 15 200 10 Manufacturing jobs as 25 10 percentage of all jobs (continues on last page) 0 0 5

1970 1980 1990 2000 20102015 1935 1950 1960 1970 1980 19902000 2010 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

contact [email protected] themselves. It has no regard for this membrane pol- and cosmic reintegration. The cult would freneti- 02 GENERAL itic, which Sloterdijk devotes himself to describing cally celebrate the final endgame of the cosmos, at length. This is why mineral intellectuality could cherishing the possibility of a radical dissolution of well lead to radical new experiments and to the all that is living and of the whole depleted cosmos; ALIENOLOGY creation of new worlds, possibly post-organic ones, the end of excitability, and also, the end of its most whether on other planets, stars or in other galaxies, sophisticated production, that of interiority. This is or even other dimensions of reality. a nihilistic goal that consists of the final eradication by BUREAU D’ÉTUDES artist group Let this acellular intellectuality, subject to the laws of the convolutions of matter, and in particular such redric Jameson (1) considers pleasure borne of physics and chemistry by dint of its absence of folds of cellular matter, such recesses or cavities Fof catastrophe to be one of the most striking discontinuity, be referred to as Cthulhu, the Great sheltered by the fine, translucid membranes as give traits of postmodern capitalism. Deriving pleasure Old One evoked by Lovecraft. By the same token, rise to certain ways of thinking, a mind frame borne or finding relief in impending catastrophe has be- we could call him by Egyptian names, given the ex- on cavities, on a steeping of thought. That matter come a new means by which to inspire faith, a new tent to which the ancient Egyptians faith that delights in disaster. This faith is the very conceived of their gods as being antithesis of the struggle for salvation that brings formed of minerals (the minerals, in displeasure, along with the drive to secure another turn, being emanations of the di- possible world. vine). As far back as the 18th cen- We can hence see the immense gap between the tury, a text from the dynasty of the power of dystopia and the frequently false nature time refers to all minerals as “di- of utopian pretension; utopia can only maintain its vine members” (2). The divine eye practicability and integrity if it eschews being the of Ra causes metals and minerals ultimate fulfilment of the pleasure taken in catastro- to multiply and the Pharaoh gov- phe. This is why it must needs remain hidden from erns the production chain of mining the powerful gaze of the automatons of alien cap- prospection. He presides over the fecundity of the finally obliterate itself. That there be nothing rather italism. mines. Gold in particular is the principle constitutive than something, that one cease to believe that there However, despite utopia being the anticipated pro- element of the gods. It is the flesh of Ra, it is life has to be something. jection of light onto the world, is there not meantime itself. It confers immortality, incorruptibility. It brings Utopia is hence the way to a radical otherness. a struggle to shed light on what the fate of the Osiris back to life, rendering him indistinguishable Love your otherness as you do yourself. Convert to world is, and how it is that the roads to deliverance from a sun god. It allows for the dead to pass from it and disappear... or fight to the death against it. are so at odds with one another? human to divine form, by way of mineralisation. Gold is the means - although both bitumen or tar Cut up technique Mineral utopia can serve as substitutes (3) - by which the mummi- But let’s forget for the moment these movements of Let us forget for a moment the standpoint that fied corpse may finally depart the humid and per- matter, and all their convolutions and complexities. comes of being human, of being alive, of being ishable realm of organic life, to live for all eternity, Let us put aside the livingness that, like everything earthbound to boot, and let us imagine, for the sake young once again, young for all time. transient, secretes a lie in order not to die, a lie of argument, the absence of any anthropomorphic proportionate to the threat of death. Let us forget rendering of objects ( Illich’s tools for conviviality, Cellular utopia the order of being and the power of becoming. Rodchenko’s comrade objects), even the absence of This mineral intellectuality, on such a grand scale, Forget the facts and let’s chant with Hegel “Too any biomorphisation that has as its aim to preserve and as deep as the cosmos itself, reminds cellular bad for the facts (um so schlimmer für die Tatsack- organic life. There would then be no objects in op- beings of their origin and of their inorganic fate. en)” For the action has already occurred and histo- position to those that would be subjects, instead Cthulhu, the original great mineral being, is disturb- ry is finished. There is nothing left to be done. Let us there would be agents, objects or subjects, humans ing to any lucidity born on the surface of organic even go so far as to forget Nothing and its ultimate or non-humans, biomorphic or otherwise, depending viscuous fluxes. He constitutes evidence of the sec- pretension to obliterate the world’s value by resign- on circumstance, context, perspective, and light. We ondary nature of this lucidity which, born after the ing itself to disappearing into the cosmic abattoir. might envisage for example a method of inorganic fact, has its origin in an age-old rationale with no Let us surrender the ancient mineral gods and the emancipation, one we could qualify as cold - not voice ... (as is channelled by Nietzsche declaring young organic gods and turn our attention instead having the safeguards of that which is animate (eu- that a living being is a rare variety of dead being). to the means of production behind all that is real, karyotes or prokaryotes) - and which would be de- The faith native to eukaryotes, their antagonistic this intoxication mechanic that is not anthropomor- fined by its very resistance to death. intellectuality separating their insides from their phic, no more biomorphic than it is lithomorphic. In such an instance, the agent is acellular, inorganic. out, may thus be radically differentiated from that This machine, this system of control, that Burroughs It carries the power, the range and the antiquity of of beings with no membrane. As with Prometheus, called the Reality Studio, and that Nick Bostrom sees chemical elements that make up the history of the this faith is crucified in no short measure on the in- as a simulation that generates all relations, feelings, cosmos, combining and recombining themselves at animate rock of the Great Old Ones, and is thus memories. the whim of stellar vagaries. The creative power of adored for its mortality alone. Utopia consists here in piercing the screen. The red these acellular agents, spiritual automatons, Grand However, the universe is itself also promised to pill taken by Neo in the film‘The Matrix’, which nods Ancients of the lithosphere, of the heliosphere and death, if it fails to undergo a process of resurrec- to the Cut Up technique, rips at the very fabric of the galaxies, is non-human, stripped of biocentrism tion which, by some miracle, would inverse the inev- the world and reveals the matrix, namely the struc- and terracentrism. It is not concerned with the pro- itable decline of matter in the nuclides. Is this thus ture of the Reality Studio. This tearing, by produc- tection that the biosphere or that humans accord the mission of cellular beings, bestowed on them by ing the sudden arrival of an exteriority, provokes in the great acellular beings? Is the te- turn the eruption of an upheaval, of a renaissance los of membranous beings to carry the in a dead world, coiled in on itself. This leads once resurrection to the heart of the laws of again to the emergence of a great Other. The Laboratory Planet n° 5 chemistry and physics? By the same token, if the mineral god is the Great There are therefore two generations, of Older One of organic fugacity, nothing is the other- which the second - this cellular life with ness of being, the exhaust pipe of existence itself. In its pretension to universality - would the same way as an extraterrestrial, a being from succeed the first, carried off on a wave another planet is the otherness of the earth dweller, of ineluctable collapse, along with ev- language (the matrix) is the otherness of aware- erything from hydrogen to nuclides. ness of self. This otherness is always antecedent to The New movement will be panvitalist, narratives that speak of it : it does not belong to aimed at transforming the decadent facts, nor to the vagaries of matter. It does not even cosmos into a cosmos swarming with en- belong to the vagaries of being. It produces effects chanted sperm circulating between the which do not adher to any ontological cognitive stars and galaxies. Its purpose would frameworks or any framework of cognisant materi- alien capitalism be to awaken matter, and to awaken it ality (biological/non-biological) : it has unexpected by means of a loving passion reactivat- ways of operating, unpredictable ways that pierce ing the life force of chemical elements. the screen of capitalism. The rip in the screen oper- ated by Neo’s red pill, or by the Cut Up technique Radical eradication utopia (whether the cut up be literary, social or relating to The counter-image to this utopia of revolt) leaves room to see that the controlling class- resurrection is the utopia of ultimate es qualify here as aliens. “Don´t let the peasants collapse. It is the desire to return to see your castle !“. nothing, the desire for the liberation of (1) - Fredric Jameon, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire the Great Older Ones, as well as for Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions, London & New York: the liberation of the cellular metamor- Verso. 2005 phosis project of the cosmos. This de- (2) – Sydney Aufrère, L’univers minéral dans la pensée égypti- sire would give rise to a cult aimed at enne. 1 – L’influence du désert et des minéraux sur la mentalité World Office for a Sustainable Alien Capi- des anciens Egyptiens, Institut français d’archéologie orientale talism - WOSAC (advertisement 2015) bailing out of the relentless drive towards collapse du Caire, 1991, p.314. 5 alien capitalism The Laboratory Planet n° 03 I culture ofthe West.Beyondthat,itreflects tech- and culture imposeourown—specifically, the deprive thealiencivilizations oftheirownhistory To makeassumptionsabout alien“technology”isto as “progress.” same continuumof “capitalist development” coded intrinsically tothesameset ofWesternvalues,the context ofWesternculture—ispoisoned,too;linked liar, specifictermwithsubjectivemeaningwithinthe progressive, thedefinitionoftechnology—apecu- Hence by positioning Western Culture as inherently potic.” (2) and LatinAmerica,too)as“backward”“des- “progressive,” andAsia(andbyimplication,Africa capitalist developmentas“progress,” the Westas into thestoryofriseWest:ideas Ricardo—developed anotherstrandtobewoven mists—Adam Smith, ThomasMalthus, and David Marks adds,“theclassicalBritishpoliticalecono- Europe anditsoffshoots[was]…notinevitable.” the political,economicandmilitarydominanceof at thecoreofEurocentrism,”writesMarks,“[and] rise oftheWestisastory—tobesure,story culture asthepinnacleofhumancivilization.“The the ethnocentrisminherenttopositioningWestern Both EdwardSaidandRobertMarkshavenoted and notonanyotherplanet. dents thatwereinnowayinevitable,notonEarth born outofaveryparticularsethistoricalacci- inherent to Western civilization, which was itself “technology” inthisinstanceisaconstruct,anidea defines “technology”aswedoisinnowayagiven; is hopelesslyEurocentric.Asocietythatwieldsand industry”—the word, like its use in Brin’s arguments, tific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in am-Webster) definition—”theapplicationofscien- ist civilizationdoes?Eveninitsdictionary(Merri- like “technology” in the same way that our capital- lization necessarilyconceiveofanabstractconcept twice inthatshortpassage.Butwouldanaliencivi- tended) abouttheword“technology.”Brinusesit er youbelievethereisanythinguniversal(punin- Whether youbelievethismightdependonwheth- Even whenbothsideshadthebestofintentions.”(1) “And ineveryoneofthosecases,therewaspain. technologically lessadvancedcivilization,”hesays. a technologicallyadvancedcivilizationcontacted with colonialism:“Wehavemanyexampleswhere fiction author,analogizesthedangersofActiveSETI signer DavidBrin,ascientistand(tellingly)science for “SearchExtraterrestrialIntelligence.)Co- contacting intelligentlife.(SETIisageneralacronym out radiosignalstowardsotherstarsinhopesof against “ActiveSETI”—thatis,theactofsending la CEOElonMusk,signedadeclarationwarning gists, includingphysicistStephenHawkingandTes- when agroupofprominentscientistsandtechnolo- One recentegregiousexamplearoseinearly2015, of politicsandpublicpolicy. deterministic projectionshaveslippedintotherealm supposed aliens could—even would—be like. These tists seemconvincedofasetideasaboutwhat Unfortunately, no.Anincreasingnumberofscien- these themes,right? the search for extraterrestrials to be informed by have nobasisinreality.Soitwouldbeabsurdfor er beenanyhintofextraterrestrialintelligence— mere fictionalimages,and—given thatthere’snev- about theColdWarandimperialism.Buttheseare ally, thattheywouldreflect20th-centuryanxieties they wouldbeever-hungryforresources—gener- that somewouldbeaggressiveandwarlike, instance, thatalienswouldhavearmedspaceships, tions, manyofwhichhavebecomeingrained:for us plentyofrecurrentthemesaboutalienciviliza- by KeithA.Spencerauthor Space Imperialism into Projecting would belike?Sci-finovelsandfilmshavegiven f youhad to guess,whatdo you thinkaliens than anything else,withnoconcernfor theenvi- pacious; acivilization thatvaluedproduction more doctrine; a civilization whose consumption was ra- and incorporatedthislust for energyintoitssocial consumed energyresources atanexponentialrate, would havetobeanunsustainable civilizationthat energy astoencompass 100% ofone’sstar?It might projectthatitwouldonedayneedsomuch KIC 8462852.Indeed,whatkindofcivilization Western cultureontotheobservationaldatafrom This speculationseemsanon-intuitiveprojectionof Dyson sphere,wasbasedonDyson’sideas. an orbitingsolarpanel“megastructure,”akintoa in thisstar’slightcurvecouldhavebeencausedby civilization. Hence,theideathatperiodicdip lar energymightbeharnessedforthesakeof light fromtheirentirestar,sothat100%ofits- lions oforbitingsolarpanels,enoughtoeclipsethe whether an“advancedcivilization”mightbuildmil- paper (6) by physicist Freeman Dyson speculating The idea of the Dyson Sphere originated in a 1960 Dyson Sphere,orbitingthestar.(5) be amassivesolarcollectorarray,alsoknownas and buzzonline,fixatedontheideathattheremay made here,reifiedinthepubliceyethrougharticles entific model.Andyet,afantasticleapinlogicwas 8462852’s lightcurve,whichobeyednoknownsci- the evidenceofanirregularfluxchangeinKIC be orbitingKIC8462852emergedonlyfrom The speculativeideathata“megastructure”might sationalistic journalistsandbloggers. was soontermedthe“alienmegastructure”bysen- an orbitingalien-madeobject.Thistheorizedobject the dip in the star’s flux could have been caused by commentators andscientistsbeganaskingwhether and wastooirregulartoconstituteaplanet—some pattern—one whichfitnoknownscientificmodels, tory (4), observed a star with an unusual light dip lite, the most prolific planet-finding space observa- observed viathismethod.WhentheKeplersatel- its orbitingplanets.Hundredsofplanetshavebeen partially eclipsed,fromourperspective,byoneof intervals, whichisoftenindicationthatthestar from astarandobserveifthelightdipsatregular extrasolar planetsistoobservethelightemitting The most common observational means of finding as apotentialcandidatesolarsystemforalienlife. stand howKIC8462852 was popularly reported Some background is required in order to under- “alien megastructure.”(3) ed thatitcouldhousewhatthemediacalledan over speculationastowhetheritspeculiar flux hint- hailed itas“themostmysteriousstarinourgalaxy” turgid name“KIC8462852.”Atleastonejournalist citement overavery peculiar, distant star withthe the stars is epitomized by the recent surge of ex- This tendencytoprojectWesterncapitalisminto universe). in theliteralsense(thatis,extendingacross as ifcapitalismandWesternvalueswereuniversal impose itsculturaltendenciesonsupposedaliens— no-capitalist hegemonyandthetendencyforusto Dyson sphere x 10 attained on the Earth, with energy consumption ~4 at a“technologicallevelclosetothepresently into threetypes,I,II,andIII.TypeIcivilizationsare The Kardashevscaledividesplanetarycivilizations modalities thatcharacterizeadvancedcivilizations.” ulate aboutthekindsoftechnologiesandexistential purpose. Asaresult,thescaleisoftenusedtospec- an ETI [Extra Terrestrial Intelligence] for any kind of simply describe the amount of energy available to trobiologists and cosmologists now use the scale to just thecapacityforcommunicationstechnology.As- panded andre-interpretedtoincludemorethan Dvorsky writes:“Kardashev’sscalehasbeenex- ticle abouttheKardashevscale,journalistGeorgy a systemknownastheKardashevscale.Inanar- based onmeasuringtheirabilitytoharnessenergy, sification systemtodescribehypotheticalaliens” and SETIthinkers,somuchthatthereisa“clas- has becomeahegemonictenetofmanyscientists would becommonplaceamongaliencivilizations The notion that energy-harnessing of this magnitude factories built.” question is,ifwecouldautomateitandhavethe ing stuff, and get the whole procedure done. The to Mercury,putsomesolarpanels,getmin- it inhislecture:“Wecoulddonow,weget the process.Armstrongemphasizessimplicityof have theroboticstechnologytoautomatemuchof lectors toharnessenergy,andthree,thatwewould the planetofMercuryinordertobuildsolarcol- axy,” two,therewouldbepoliticalwilltodestroy one, thathumanswouldwantto“colonizethegal- ingly logicalassumptionsthatflowfromeachother: Armstrong structures hislecture as aseriesofseem- destruction anddismantlingoftheplanetMercury. atively “easy,”thoughwouldrequirethecomplete ating aDysonSpherearoundtheSunwouldberel- recorded lecture(7),Armstrongexplainedthatcre- panels tocollectmassiveamountsofenergy.Ina Sphere—that is, to wrapoursunwithorbital solar be a“simple”wayforhumanitytobuildDyson University, proposedthatthelatterscenariomight Indeed, StuartArmstrong,aphysicistatOxford quest forenergy. willing tostrip-mineanddestroyentireplanetsinits ronment orconservation;andfinally,acivilization More radically, TypeIstatuswouldonly truly dro, wind,ocean, andsoon. of energyitproducesaswell, likethermal,hy- that reaches the planet, and all the other forms fore, itneedstocaptureall ofthesolarenergy For acivilizationtoattain Type Istatus,there- and build“citiesontheoceans.” have takenadvantageofeveryinchspace, the weather—andevenvolcanoes.”Itwill scale civilization that can “control earthquakes, physicist MichioKakuhassaid,it’saplanetary power available to it on its home planet. As thetical civilization that has harnessed all the A Type I istypically associated with ahypo- 19 erg/sec,”(8)inDvorsky’swords, be achieved once the entire planet is physically sation with Dr. Anthony Aguirre, a University of Cal- reconfigured to maximize its energy producing ifornia, Santa Cruz cosmologist and director of the NOTES 04 potential. For example, the entire mass of a Foundational Questions Institute, Aguirre said that (1) Falk, Dan. “It Could Be a Really Bad Idea for Us to Contact Aliens.” Slate. Slate Magazine, 29 Mar. 2015. Web. 3 Dec. planet could be reconstituted to take the form his foundation funds research into “seeing if there 2015. of a massive solar array to energize a civiliza- are distant stars that have been manipulated by an (2) Marks, Robert. The Origins of the Modern World: Fate and tion’s power-hungry machinery.(9) alien intelligence.” Aguirre, too, was convinced that Fortune in the Rise of the West. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Little- Correspondingly, a Type II civilization has har- aliens could have imperialist aims. “If we tapped field, 2007. Print. (3) Anderson, Ross. “The Most Mysterious Star in Our Galaxy.” nessed all the energy from its local star—using into some kind of interstellar communication stream The Atlantic. The Atlantic, 10 Oct. 2015. Web. 2 Dec. 2015. Dyson Spheres, of course—whereas a Type III civi- between aliens, I would suggest that we don’t inter- (4) Corum, Jonathan. “Kepler’s Tally of Planets.” The New York lization has harnessed all the energy from its local fere or make ourselves known,” he said. Times. The New York Times, 23 July 2015. Web. 1 Dec. 2015. galaxy. It’s hard to imagine a democratic, pluralistic soci- (5) Bodenner, Chris. “Maybe It’s a Dyson Sphere.” The Atlantic. ety, lacking a rigid authoritarian command struc- Atlantic Media Company, 19 Oct. 2015. Web. 13 Dec. 2015. (6) Dyson, Freeman J. “Search for artificial stellar sources of The use of the term “advanced civilizations” here is ture, would undertake such industrially and ecolog- infrared radiation.” Science 131.3414 (1960): 1667-1668. highly subjective and biased. It assumes that civili- ically intensive projects as mining the entire energy (7) Armstrong, Stuart. “Von Neumann Probes, Dyson Spheres, zations would, in the future, follow the same ener- resources of the planet, or destroying Mercury to Exploratory Engineering and the Fermi Paradox.” Von Neu- gy-hungry model that our own has for a very brief build solar collectors around the sun. However, mann Probes, Dyson Spheres, Exploratory Engineering and the Fermi Paradox. Future of Humanity Institute, University of Ox- time period. And yet, the deterministic path that led these might seem like logical scenarios if one were ford, 1 Feb. 2012. Web. 13 Dec. 2015. scientists and futurists to conclude that the Karda- to project our capitalist imperialist civilization far (8) Kardashev, Nikolai. “Cosmology and Civilizations.” Astro- shev scale is a good way to typify alien civilizations, into the future, assuming our civilization’s industrial physics and Space Science 252.25 Mar. 1997. or that a Dyson sphere is a likely, logical policy and and cultural practices as something “innate” and (9) Dvorsky, George. “How to Build a Dyson Sphere in Five industrial outcome of an “intelligent civilization” is “natural” to all intelligent life—rather than a spe- (relatively) Easy Steps.” Io9. Gawker Media, 17 Apr. 2012. Web. 13 Dec. 2015. so accepted that it drives policy. In a phone conver- cific, short-lived historical moment.

Developments in the life sciences have required us pushes humans to plan for measures that would pro- to further rethink the boundaries between differ- tect their safety. He sees the ecology of fear de- Life in ent forms of life, for example through cross-species veloping into the predominant form of ideology of DNA manipulations or the acknowledgement that global capitalism, new opium for the masses replac- the human body itself is largely inhabited by non- ing the declining religion. The underlying message the Teratope human genomes. As bioscience and philosophy had of this new ecology is a deeply conservative one opened up the nonhuman dimension of life itself at - any change can only be the change for the worse. a cellular, genetic, molecular, and autopoietic level, by Špela Petrič biologist and artist is had unhinged the categorical divide between the “While we cannot gain full mastery over our bio- Xeno- presumes I know what homo- is. If I am unsure, individual life of human beings and the collective sphere, it is unfortunately in our power to derail I can only ever encounter tera-. vitality of all living matter, between the discursive it, to disturb its balance so that it will run amok, (prefixes from Greek homós: one and the same; politics of bios and the vital politics of zoë (van den swiping us away in the process. This is why, al- xénos: stranger, guest (noun); alien, foreign, strange Hengel, 2012). The zoë had returned as a vital though ecologists are all the time demanding that (adj.); téras: monster) force of material generation, as Braidotti states: we change radically our way of life, underlying this “Contemporary scientific practices have forced us to demand is its opposite, a deep distrust of change, The Lost Simplicity of Zoë and Bios touch the bottom of some inhumanity that connects of development, of progress: every radical change ristotle interpreted human life as an actual- to the human precisely in the immanence of its bodi- can have the unintended consequence of triggering Aization of a person in society, acting as a poly materialism. With the genetic revolution we can a catastrophe.” (Žižek, 2007). litical body (bios, the good life), along with being speak of a generalized ‘becoming infra human’ of in possession of the primordial essence of being bios. The category of ‘life’ has accordingly cracked The conclusion of this reasoning is that since nature alive (zoë), a trait shared by all living creatures. under the strain.” (Braidotti, 2006) Thus zoë, the is changing constantly and the conditions on Earth The assumption of classical political theory was that indiscernible and unalienable component of all liv- will make the survival of humanity impossible in a zoë, or ‘bare life’, did not belong in the public ing beings, became increasingly relevant in our un- couple of centuries, the collective goal of humanity realm, but remained within the private sphere of derstanding of the mechanisms of society and our should be not to adapt itself to nature, but to in- the household (Agamben, 1998). Later, the classical relationship to nature and to ourselves. tervene into the Earth ecology even more forcefully distinction between bios and zoë became increas- But zoë is messy, illogical, complex, serendipitous with the aim to freeze the Earth’s change. This way ingly disjointed under the impact of modern capi- and vile. Zoë is xeno. Earth’s ecology will remain unchanged, thus en- talist politics, which, according to Foucault, intimate- abling humanity’s survival. The anthropocentric pro- ly invested the natural life of the human species in Ecoterror Niche Construction posal points to a technological bias involved in the the discursive mechanisms of state power (Foucault, According to Žižek (2007), the dominant version of contemporary assessment of climate change and 1976). Life as such became a principal object of current ecology is the ecology of fear, fear of a ca- reveals a strong belief in human knowledge and power and zoë and bios finally coincided, a phe- tastrophe - man-made or natural - that may deep- capacities. However, if natural adaptation is not nomenon referred to as biopolitics. ly perturb or destroy the human civilization. Fear fast enough and intervention is necessary to pre- The Laboratory Planet n 2 - alien capitalism vent human extinction, two more plausible scenarios can be read as terra, pertaining to the Earth, or as of bearing is underappreciated, deterritorialization 05 come to mind: to survive, humans may (i) alter the tera, derived from teras, the Ancient Greek word is perceived as threatening rather than liberating. immediate environment they live in (creating “envi- for monster. The latin word terra refers to the fact Pursuing humanistic values and holding on to old ronmental bubbles” such as space stations), (ii) bio- the discourse is centered around the ontology of life classifications is inept, because it does not acknowl- technologically alter their biological constitution to on Earth. Tera implies the fear of otherness (sym- edge those were coined in a different era with adapt to the new environment. The first would imply bolized by monsters), a challenge to be overcome different societal tasks to fulfill. a drastic reduction in population and redistribution when undergoing the transition from a hegemonic The teratope lacks a temporal dimension, because of wealth among the survivors, whereas the latter essentialist approach to species to the concept of its span of geological time is insignificant in compar- approach implies a biotechnological modification of fluidity and multiplicity contained within categories, ison to the trauma of unveiling humanness as one of humans. which become heuristic ascriptions rather than being the many, but not more than, natural phenomena. descriptions of reality. Terrabiology thus questions It speaks of our perception of its monstrosity, but The modification, molding of our biological selves the human disposition in relation to fundamental- in deep time the current state is just another a trial alongside the environment should not be perceived ly different forms of organization, which can yield (and perhaps error) on a global scale, one actu- as intrusive and novel. Human culture has greatly successful systems exhibiting life-like properties. The alization of the infinite adjacent possibles. Due to amplified the capacity for niche construction and category of the discriminated Other changes ac- this, the teratope does not have the anthropophagic the ability to modify selection pressures. In compar- cording to context (not male, not heterosexual, not ecological significance as the Anthropocene does. In ison to other mammals, hominids (including humans) abled, not human, not living, and so on), but it is ex- the teratope there is no room for human hubris, but have evolved more in response to self-constructed emplary for a human, who defines him/herself by significant potential for reframing. selection pressures (that is the culturalized environ- what he/she is not (Heidegger, 1962). An intention- To achieve emancipation from the sentiment of 21st ment) and less in response to selection pressures that al shift of perspective from the exclusionary to an century biopolitics we should immunize against the stem from independent factors in their environment, inclusive one facilitates a change in the motivation xeno. We have to claim the alien of the contempo- leading hominid populations to become increasingly and rationale of the human’s scientific endeavors. rary experience as our own. To learn to love our divorced from local ecological pressures (Laland et The study of the Other is more evidently a study of monsters, they are monstrous only in the eye of the al., 2001). For example, human-induced pollution the same. The subjectivity in research can no longer beholder. may provoke new technology to remove environ- be considered an adverse effect, as the observer is mental contaminants, thus counteracting the change not only WITHIN the system he/she observes, but IS References in the genetic selective environments for species the (same type of) system. Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Translated by Heller-Roazen. Stanford: Stanford Uni- across relevant ecosystems (Kendal et al., 2011). versity Press. Similarly, drug treatments to prevent diseases may The teratope is the figurative transformation of our Braidotti, Rossi. 2006. Transpositions: On nomadic ethics. Cam- relax genetic selection for disease resistance or sus- bioshpere marked by a rupture in the occidental bridge: Polity Press. ceptibility. In short, humans have reached the stage culture-nature essentialism, which has been failing Foucault, Michel. 1979 [1976]. The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An Introduction. Translated by Robert Hurley. London: Allen of evolution where their culture (including technolo- to maintain its elementary order amongst the bes- Lane. gy) is by far outrunning biology and is the predom- tiary of forms and functions coaxed into existence Kendal, Jeremy, Tehrani, Jamshid J., and Odling-Smee, John. inant form of adaptation. by developments in both mimetic and synthetic bio/ 2011. “Human niche construction in interdisciplinary focus.” Philo- technology. In the teratope we continuously tread sophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Coming to terms with tera- untested grounds: the possible, the desired, the 366(1566): 785-792. Laland, Kevin N., Odling-Smee, John, and Feldman, Marcus W. Terrabiology is an artistic discourse, which frames intimidating, and the monstrous combine to yield 2001. “Cultural niche construction and human evolution.” Journal an ontological perspective on life on Earth, contem- increasing anxiety about the future – a future of of Evolutionary Biology 14.1: 22-33. plates the position of the human within the terrafor- know-nots, not knowns. Anxiety as the dominating van den Hengel, Louis. 2012. “Zoegraphy: Per/forming Post- mative system and understands the human culture as social affect is internalized, feeding off of the per- human Lives.” Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 35(1): 1-20. an epiphenomenon of the self-aware species. It is ceived individual guilt and responsibility while caus- Žižek, Slavoj. 2007. “Censorship Today: Violence, or Ecology as an attempt to form a theoretical vantage point ex- ing debilitating arrest reminiscent of powerlessness a New Opium for the Masses.” Accessed June 30, 2012. http:// traneous from Earth as a biosphere. The prefix terra and alienation. The proliferative quality of the loss www.lacan.com/zizecology1.htm, 2007 HUMAN alien capitalism XENOBIOLOGY

by EWEN CHARDRONNET Author

Xenobiology (XB) is the endeavor to overcome “the constraints imposed by evolution on natural living organisms. It is an emerging field in the context of synthetic biology, encompassing the design, generation and evolution of alternative forms of life” says the preliminary statement of the first international conference on xenobiology organised in The Laboratory Planet n 2 - Genoa in may 2014 (1).

Synthetic biologists define Xenobiology as the study of any life-form departing from natural terrestrial life, whether on Earth or elsewhere. A “Xenobiont” being any creature departing from natural terrestrial life. Most of their field of research is based on the Xeno nucleic acids (XNA), a synthetic alternative to the natural nucleic acids DNA and RNA as information-storing biopolymers that differs in the sugar backbone.

Xenobiologists find DNA four-letter genetic alpha- bet relatively limited. Recent breakthrough of a genetic code of six XNAs rather than the four nat- urally-occurring DNA nucleotide bases has yielded endless opportunities for xenobiologists in genetic modifications and expansions of chemical function- ality. After 4 billion years, a new tree will sprout in the ‘‘Garden of Eden’’. Non-DNA-based biological systems will be a safer place toconduct SB experiments and applications (modified) (Markus Schmidt, Xenobiology: A Different paths are explored. One is trying to new form of life as the ultimate biosafety tool, 2015, BioEssays 32:322–331) know why life evolved seemingly via an early RNA world to the DNA-RNA-protein system and its near- life as we know it. Researchers point out that he- ways to control and even reprogram the genetic ly universal genetic code. Was it an evolutionary redity and evolution are not limited to DNA and makeup of biological organisms moving forward. “accident” or were there constraints that ruled out RNA as once thought, but are simply processes that XNA is for instance studied in the attempts of solv- other types of chemistries? By testing alternative have developed from polymers capable of storing ing the current issue of genetic pollution in geneti- biochemical “primordial soups”, it is expected to information. cally modified organisms. Co-organiser of the 2014 better understand the principles that gave rise to Other dimension in the study of XNA is to explore Genoa conference Markus Schmidt explains that this 06

novel information-storing biopolymer is “invisible” to natural biological systems and raises an oppor- tunity to implement a genetic firewall that impedes Shadow life – shadow biosphere shadow life could build itself out of chemical ele- exchange of genetic information with the natural Paul Davies is a physicist, astrobiologist and ments unused by other life. Putting aside previous world, making it a biosafety tool. Schmidt writes early activist of the Search for Extraterrestrial speculations on the idea that silicon could replace “Just as the Earth lost its place as the center of the Intelligence (SETI) program. In his book The Eerie carbon in any life form, shadow life supporters universe, or men lost its unique status in the animal Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelli- rather think that arsenic might make a good substi- world, our natural world could lose its unique sta- gence (Mariner Books, 2011) he has suggest- tute for phosphorous, which links together individual tus as being synonymous with ‘life’”. And “Creation ed that if life has evolved on Earth more than DNA letters and stores cellular energy. of ‘alien’ or ‘weird’ life in the laboratory, in other once, microorganisms may exist on Earth which A broad multidimensional understanding of the words, advances in xenobiology research, will not have no evolutionary connection with any other chemistries of life and the planetary processes that only contribute to a better understanding of the known form of life. He states that if scientists shape their evolution and development is now as- origin of life, but will definitely expand our capa- discover an alternate form of microbial life on cendant, driven by the xenobiology research to bilities to provide safer biotechnology production Earth, the odds are good that life is common explore and extend the boundaries of what we tools for human and environmental needs. Future elsewhere. “Shadow life”, as Davies calls it will call living. When these environmental niches and life forms that are orthogonal to natural life forms, be easiest to find if it lives in niches too inhospi- planetary processes become more diverse and ex- such as those based on XNAs, could represent the table for even the hardiest of microbes.The up- treme, how might these chemistries differ from what ultimate biosafety tool” (2). per atmosphere, bombared in ultraviolet light, we currently know? Researchers are in pursuit of and boiling hot deep sea volcanic vents are two the answers through a top-down, systems-biological The greedy algorithm of natural selection possibilities. survey of extreme environments and identification A greedy algorithm is an algorithm that follows the If shadow life lives among us, scientists will need of their associated biochemical signatures; a bot- problem solving heuristic of making the locally opti- to look for organisms that break the rules of tom-up, systems-chemical investigation of emergent mal choice at each stage with the hope of finding a known biochemistry. For instance, all known ter- lifelike behavior from inanimate yet dynamic chem- global optimum. In many problems, a greedy strat- restrial life builds its proteins out of amino acids ical networks; and work at the “Golden Spike”, the egy does not in general produce an optimal solu- with left-handed chirality orientation (chirality). interface of inanimate and living matter, to explore tion, but nonetheless a greedy heuristic may yield Organisms that use right-handed amino acids the landscape of alternative biochemistries and locally optimal solutions that approximate a global could very well be alien. their potential origins here and elsewhere in the optimal solution in a reasonable time. Since all life stores its genes in RNA or DNA universe. built from five kinds of chemical letters (RNA For xenobiologist Philippe Marlière, “natural se- replaces thymine with uracil), shadow life might There is a whole “shadow biosphere” to be discov- lection is a poor algorithm of optimisation, akin write their genomes using another code, or an- ered – or to be created by the xenobiologists of to greedy algorithms in the computer world”. He other kind of chemical. Along these same lines, the biotech industries. consideres the limitations of the greedy algorithm that presided to the elaboration of natural spiecies. According to him “All molecular structures, all the Noah’s Ark, show us that we are in a local mini- In their first international conference in Genoa, xe- third land in the potential triangular trade of the mum”. Following this logic “All natural species and nobiologists depict themselves as Christopher Co- “greedy” enlighted xenocapitalists after the discov- their molecular devices are imperfect and improve lumbus discovering the Americas. What does that ery of the new xenobiological land? locally within a narrow combinatorial horizon. Evo- kind of simplistic metaphor mean? Simplistic “obscu- lutionary breakthroughs and radical metabolic in- rantist” question could be then asked to these “heu- novations will have to be designed and enforced”. ristic conquistadores unhindered by their lack of Then come the questions : “What is the minimum ge- navigation instruments“: if one third of the emerged (1) - http://xb1genoa.com netic cost for bifurcating away from the terrestrial lands were not “discovered” by Europeans at the (2) - “Xenobiology: A new form of life as the ultimate biosafety biodiversity? How to access other possibilities living time of Columbus, do they mean that they are go- tool“, Markus Schmidt, Bioessays, 2010 Apr; 32(4): 322–331. (3) - “Théorie et pratique de la xénobiologie“, Philippe Mar- worlds while preserving human health and mature ing to populate the planet with no more than one lière, Institute of Systems and Synthetic Biology, Evry, France. habitats?” (3) third of new aliens forms of life? What will the Communication on march 11, 2015, at Collège de France. Becoming- Phototroph by Aliens in Green artist group

n a december stand-alone short story (1) sci- Ience-fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson get a glimpse of a very green future through the lens of a

Supreme Court transcript. In an era where iGEM(2) The Laboratory Planet n° 5 Registry of Standard Biological Parts grew much larger, the synthetic biologists found biobricks in the catalog that could be combined to make a synthetic chloroplast and created photosynthesizing human cells. They modified tattoo needles to inject chloroplast-fibroblasts into human skin, in the manner of an ordinary tattoo. They formed an LLC called SunSkin but soon they decided to go Open Source, Elysia chlorotica is one of the “solar-powered sea slugs”, utilizing solar energy via chloro- photosynthesis being a natural process. plasts from its algal food.(Illustration: Wesley Allsbrook for K.S. Robinson’s Oral Argument)

“Once they published the recipe, and the knowl- life of the biosphere? edge spread that human photosynthesis worked, What would be this Great Crash / Jubilee caused By its accomplishment man would free himself alien capitalism the injection method as such became what you by people feeding directly off the sun’s ener- from living matter. From a social heterotrophic might call generic. (…) when you photosynthe- gy? Crash of food production and consumption; being, he would become an autotroph. size sunlight you will be less hungry. You might over-exploited agricultural lands reverting to nat- The repercussion of this phenomenon within the also spend more of your day outdoors in the ural ecosystems; rates of starvation, malnutrition, biosphere would be immense. It would signify the sun, that’s right, and subsequently decide that and food borne illness would plummeting? A global schism of the block of life, the creation of a third you didn’t need quite as much food or heat- stratigraphic shift. branch independent of living matter. By this feat ing as before. Or clothing. Or housing, that’s there would appear on the terrestrial surface, right. I don’t see all these green naked people In 1925 geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky, the in- and for the first time in the geological history of wandering around sleeping under tarps in the ventor of Biosphere and Noosphere concepts, was the globe, an autotrophic animal. park like you seem to, but granted, there have already speculating on “Human Autotrophy”, a Today, it is difficult, perhaps impossible, for us been some changes in consumption. Did changes “becoming-plant” of human kind, and its geological to grasp the geological consequences of this in consumption cause the Great Crash? No one consequencies. event—but it is clear that it would be the culmi- can say. (...) What you call the Great Crash oth- nation of a long paleontological evolution, which ers call the Jubilee. It’s been widely celebrated “What would be the significance of the synthetic would represent, not an action of the free will as such.” production of nutriments to human life and to the of humanity, but the manifestation of a natural 07 process. By this achievement, human understand- extra-terrestrial abstract ing would produce not only a great social effect, but a global geological change”. dimensional control formalism abstraction Vladimir Vernadsky, Human Autotrophy, alien (alien) déterritorialisation (alien) 1925. god extra-terrestrial master signifier system contingency non alien procession fils without subject financial The capability of some marine animals extra-terrestrial de dieu simulacrum speculation to take advantage of photosynthesis by alien cosmo- projection algorithme E.T. méthodologie hosting symbiotic algae has been known capital nuclear binary epistemopolitical horizon indeed since the late 19th century. This solar apocalypse matrix economy extractivism capacity, referred to as photosymbiosis, disassembling BECOMING alien is based on structural and functional com- human plexes that involve two distantly unrelat- colonisation panspermiA of space state ed organisms. These stable photosymbiotic associations between metazoans and COSMIC COSMIC MUSHROOM photosynthetic protists play fundamental recoding ternary quaternary HUMANS matrix matrix roles in marine ecology as exemplified by reef communities and their vulnera- non human decoding bility to global changes threats (3). An colonisation of the Earth autotrophy association between a host (multi- or uni- cellular) and an “algal” photosymbiont human colonisation represents, in principle, a “domestication” of the Earth of photosynthesis that can result in a tro- anthropomorphosis phic independence as long as the part- ners are located in the euphotic zone in cosmopolitical horizon reassembling without identity view of the infinite source of solar energy right of (4). non humans informal without rights terracentrism queer alienation radical autochtony cooperation Here we introduce the photosymbiot- terratope social and social and ic tidal acoel flatworm,Symsagittifera becoming alien becoming territorial territorial roscoffensis, and its obligatory green of the earth shadow non-alien biosphere non-aliens becoming aliens becoming algal photosymbiont, Tetraselmis convolu- of humans tae (Lack of the algal partner invariably results in acoel lethality emphasizing the terrestrial local mandatory nature of the photosymbiotic Aliens in green algae for the animal’s survival). Together they form a composite photosymbiotic unit. Studies beginning Two Plasms as the Basis of Symbiogenesis”, a “New the Elysia chlorotica’s chromosome. This gene makes in the late nineteenth century at the marine biolog- Study or the Origins of Organisms”, argumenting an enzyme that is critical to the function of the chlo- ical station of Roscoff (Britanny, France – giving that plants’ predecessors co-opted chloroplasts - roplasts, which are typically found in plants and its name to the worm) by its director Yves Delage which were once free-living bacteria - an evolu- algae. centered on the origin and the role of the enigmatic tionary story that happened billions of years ago. “green cells” inhabiting the body of S. roscoffensis It has been known since the 1970s that Elysia chlo- (thought to be chloroplasts because of starch accu- After the World War One, russian botanist Boris ritica “steals” chloroplasts from Vaucheria litorea mulation and oxygen production) (Delage, 1886) Kozo-Polyansky was the first to explain the theory (called “kleptoplasty”) and embeds them into its (5). The enigmatic green photosynthetic corpuscles in terms of Darwinian evolution. In his 1924 book own digestive cells. Once inside the slug cells, the

alien capitalism (“zoochlorellae”) were unambiguously ascribed to Symbiogenesis: A New Principle of Evolution (12) he chloroplasts continue to photosynthesize for up to the algae in the detailed studies of Keebles and wrote, “The theory of symbiogenesis is a theory nine months—much longer than they would perform Gamble (1905, 1907) (6). These authors document- of selection relying on the phenomenon of symbio- in the alga. The photosynthesis process produces ed their substantial set of original experiments and sis”. These theories were first dismissed or ignored, carbohydrates and lipids, which nourish the slug. observations on the biology, ecology and behavior but the idea of symbiogenesis was reflected half a How the slug manages to maintain these photosyn- of S. roscoffensis and the associated symbiosis in century later in the modern endosymbiotic theory thesizing organelles for so long has been the topic a book entitled Plant animals, a study in symbiosis, developed and popularised by the zoologist and of intensive study and a good deal of controversy. 1910 (7). geneticist Lynn Margulis after her theoretical paper The Woods Hole scientists confirmed that one of entitled “On the Origin of Mitosing Cells”. While several algal genes needed to repair damage to From Symbiogenesis to Endosymbiosis recognising Darwin’s contributions, Margulis total- chloroplasts, and keep them functioning, is present Beside being director of the marine biological sta- ly rejected the modern evolutionary synthesis (13), on the slug chromosome. The gene is incorporated tion at Roscoff, Yves Delage was Professor of Zool- strongly argumenting againt Neo-Darwinism. She into the slug chromosome and transmitted to the

The Laboratory Planet n° 5 ogy, Anatomy and Comparative Physiology at the explained that certain interpretations of Neo-Dar- next generation of slugs. While the next genera- Sorbonne. He had written one of the great texts winism that she felt were excessively focused on tion must take up chloroplasts anew from algae, reviewing and criticising 19th century theories on inter-organismic competition, as she believed that the genes to maintain the chloroplasts are already the cell, heredity and variation: La Structure du Pro- history will ultimately judge them as comprising present in the slug genome. toplasma et les Théories sur L’Hérédité et les Grandes “a minor twentieth-century religious sect within the There is no way on earth that genes from an alga Problèmes de la Biologie Générale (1895) (8). His sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon Bi- should work inside an animal cell. And yet here, 1896 book with E. Hérouard, Traité de Zoologie ology” (14). She also believed that proponents of they do. They allow the animal to rely on sunshine Concrète: la Cellule et les Protozoaires (9) was one the standard theory “wallow in their zoological, for its nutrition. So if something happens to their of the few protozoology texts of its time. Together capitalistic, competitive, cost-benefit interpretation food source, they have a way of not starving to with the anarchist neo-Lamarckian biologist, Marie of Darwin – having mistaken him. Neo-Darwinism, death until they find more algae to eat. Goldsmith, Delage edited the journal L’Année Bi- which insists on [the slow accrual of mutations by This biological adaptation is also a mechanism ologique (10) which kept biologists abreast of re- gene-level natural selection], is in a complete funk” of rapid evolution. When a successful transfer of cent contributions, reviewing them with their own (15). She opposed competition-oriented views of genes between species occurs, evolution can ba- commentary. One of the early neo-Lamarckians in evolution, stressing the importance of symbiotic or sically happen from one generation to the next, France, Delage was always on the lookout for al- cooperative relationships between species. rather than over an evolutionary time scale of thou- ternative theories to neo-Darwinism; and he main- sands of years. tained a longstanding interest in symbiotic theories Animal-plants today Microbiologists at the Marine Biologie Station in of the cell. Many studies in marine biology have been done Roscoff have also been studying the possible occur- since that era on unique photosymbiotic units, but rence of lateral gene transfer from the symbiont to At the fall of his life Delage became interested new aspect has been highlighted last year at the the host. Although the exchange of genetic material in the work of Russian researchers exploring the Woods Hole Marine Biology Laboratory (16) in between metazoans and symbionts is thought to be symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae in Massachusetts in studying the emerald green sea very rare, the obligate symbiosis of S. roscoffen- lichens. This feature had been shown in 1879 by slug Elysia chlorotica, one of the “solar-powered sea sis might involve such gene transfer (Bailly et al., Heinrich Anton de Bary (11) and biologist and bot- slugs“, utilizing solar energy via chloroplasts from 2014). anist Konstantin Merezhkowsky had been propos- its algal food. It lives in a subcellular endosymbiotic ing a theory of symbiogenesis – that larger, more relationship with chloroplasts of the marine hetero- The algae-person complex cells evolved from the symbiotic relation- kont alga Vaucheria litorea. The researchers used Ocean animals are not the only animals that have ship between less complex ones. He presented this an advanced imaging technique to confirm that a stolen solar secrets from the plant kingdom. There’s theory in 1910, in his Russian work, “The Theory of gene from the alga Vaucheria litorea is present on the pea aphid, which charges up a solar-powered The Laboratory Planet n° 5 alien capitalism 08 intergalactic biopolitics intergalactic Medical examinations appear to have been an element of the UFO phenomenon almost from the very beginning. When the science of ufol- ogy appeared, the phenomenon of UFO was associated with green aliens from the deep black space, studying planet Earth with scientific or military purposes. At the end of the 20th century, ufologists started talking about the tention in- of extraterrestrial beings to obtain the human genetic material. Elizabeth Klarer (1910 - 1994) was one of first the women, who allegedly had a love affair with an extraterrestrial man. In 1956 she fell took alien The Akon. named ‘man’ a with love in her to his home planet Metok. He seduced the woman there and Elizabeth delivered Centauri. Alpha a in somewhere remained Ayling, boy, - competi year student every organises Foundation Competition Biology. Synthetic tion in photo- 50% of marine represents around (3) - Photosymbiosis synthesis. - marine acoel Symsagit and multifaceted (4) - “The chimerical regeneration”, to brain photosymbiosis roscoffensis: from tifera | Article microbiology , Volume 5 et al., Frontiers in Xavier Bailly 498, 2014 sur les planaires rhabdocoeles acoe- (5) - “Études histologiques II 4, 109–160. les”. Arch. Zool. Exp. Gén. Gamble, F. W. (1905). “On the iso- (6) - Keebles, F., and organism (“Zoochlorella”) of Convoluta lation of the infecting Soc. Lond. B 77, 66–68. doi: 10.1098/ roscoffensis”. Proc. R. F., and Gamble, F. W. (1907). “The rspb.1905.0059 ; Keebles, green cells of Convoluta roscoffensis”. origin and nature of the 167–217. Q. J. Microsc. Sci. 51, in Symbiosis. Plant Animals, A Study (7) - Keebles, F. (1910). Press. Cambridge: University 17, 2016 from http://gallica.bnf.fr/ (8) - Retrieved jan. ark:/12148/bpt6k5701548j Protozoaires, (9) - Traité de Zoologie Concrète: La Cellule Et Les Press, 2010 Yves Delage, Edgard J. E. Hérouard, Nabu (10) - http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb32694956m/date (11) - Die Erscheinung der Symbiose, Heinrich Anton de Bary, Strasbourg, 1879 Boris (12) - Symbiogenesis, A New Principle of Evolution, Harvard Uni- Mikhaylovich Kozo-Polyansky, Ed. Lynn Margulis, versity Press; 1 edition (June 15, 2010) 1942 book, Evolu- (13) - Julian Huxley invented the term in his tion: The Modern Synthesis. Mother”, Mann, C (14) - “Lynn Margulis: Science’s Unruly Earth (1991), Science 252 (5004): 378–381. (15) - Ibid. SK (2014) “FISH (16) - Schwartz JA, Curtis NE, and Pierce algal (Vaucheria labeling reveals a horizontally transferred chromo- litorea) nuclear gene on a sea slug (Elysia chlorotica) some”. Biol. Bull. 227: 300-312. in a salamander (17) - “Intracellular invasion of green algae host”, Ryan Kerney et al., 2011, PNAS, April 19, 2011 vol. 108 no. 16. http://www.pnas.org/content/108/16/6497 et al., 2011; (18) - Towards a Synthetic Chloroplast”, Agapakis retrieved from DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0018877 the Nucleus: How (19) - “Gene Transfer from Organelles to Much, What Happens, and Why?”, William Martin and Rein- hold G. Herrmann, Plant Physiol. (1998) 118: 9–17. (20) - “A cutaneous gene therapy approach to human leptin using phenotype ob/ob murine the of correction deficiencies: et al, Larcher Fernando grafts”, keratinocyte leptin-targeted The FASEB Journal vol. 15 no. 9 1529-1538 contem- (21) - For a Xenogenesis scenario, see investigative Robertina and Petric Špela by “humalga” project art porary Šebjanic (2012) http://robertina.net/humalga/ nics is xeno-, outside nature. So would it be the nature. So would nics is xeno-, outside emanation of a transcendent, a-cosmic, power? its why That’s nature. outside not is technics But cannot save (nature through resurrection), nor be saved (from its own demonic character). It does not fit into an eschatology. “On its own, says the Gospel of Mark, the Earth bears fruit” (Mt 4.26 to 29). Earth is an automata. The difference, born of language and technics, between organic and mechanical automaton does not matter here. Technoscience, it creates, non-organic automatons that and the seems to be part of a non-terrestrial project, cosmic circumstances conflicting with earthly cir- cosmic space of in terms Indeed, cumstances. and time, what does the madness of plutonium matter? Alien is thus the cosmos threatening the ecology of the Earth. And non-alien, all that participates in the ecology of the Earth. Alien is to the non- alien what cosmic ecology is to the ecology of the Earth. non-alien the to is alien the terms, political In what the State is to society. And there is an ontological struggle between them. This struggle is also that which opposes the large state reli- to the bioastronomic humans gions, submitting abstractions of the priests, and the telluric tribes who oppose them with their local and concrete partisan ethic and its metabolic power. NOTE 1 - Oral Argument, Kim Stanley Robinson, retrieved Jan, 21, 2016 from http://www.tor.com/2015/12/07/oral-argument-kim-stanley-robinson/ Machine (iGEM) Engineered Genetically (2) - The International If we humans wanted chloroplasts for ourselves, or for ourselves, chloroplasts wanted humans If we need to genetically or pets, we would our livestock proteins required host animal to express modify the that has been estimated function. It for chloroplast chloro- required for of the genes about 70-90% by the plant’s genome are provided plast function (19). (Martin et al., 1998) be most feasible for chloroplasts, It would probably genes, to be added to skin along with the required as a skin graft, as there stem cells and applied in this area for burns victims. is a lot of research been used to produce proteins This approach has al, 2001) (20), and so should in mice (Larcher et sugar by photosynthesis be feasible for producing this graft may require regular in humans. At first will be replacement, but eventually the chloroplasts sustainable within the skin. the photosynthe- As in S.K. Robinson sci-fi short story, and us, little sising skin would necessarily be green, pigments could green men/women. Eventually other (or algae-person plant-person be engineered. The a than more water lot need a also would (21)) normal human. would need So, although photosynthetic humans less. Still, re- less food, it wouldn’t be substantially population, it searchers argue that, over a large farmland ; and could slightly reduce the need for livestock too, that this process could be done to that could no- and with a large number of livestock to feed ticeably reduce the area of land required cattle or horses. Of course it would work better for “green sacred cows”, but what would happen to hairy animals like sheep, as the hair would reduce the light available for photosynthesis? Here we’re going into fantasy land. ccording to Jürgen Habermas “the resurrection of nature cannot be logically con- by bureau d’etudes Cosmic Ecology Earth Ecology vs ceived within materialism”. Let’s abandon the anthropomorphization of nature, abandon the resurrection of nature by man. New relationships between human and nonhuman are established. The term “human” as an abstract and general entity, separated from nature, as the producer of a cosmic and eschatological project, is in crisis. Human is no longer the resur- rected resurrecting nature. It is no longer that its work with nature entity denying denatured and preparing, with this negation, the Great Metamorphosis. animality return to human about a therefore Is it (the animality mentioned by Kojève in the note to his lessons about the Hegel’s Phenomenology pre- eschatological it’s Abandoning Spirit)? of organism no more than tensions, is the human a bacterial group like other animals or plants, though, unlike the latter, colonized by an alien: technics, abstraction ? Technics here would refer to the alien producer of a cosmic project, which would have used the human as host for its realisation (a project that would remain hidden) . “You know, technics is not a human invention. Rather the opposite“, says Lyotard (The inhuman, p.22). Technics has used (détourné) a bacterial group to make homo faber, homo sapiens, etc. Thus understood, tech- A It is a fascinating demonstration of biological ver- satility. But it’s a far cry from creating, de novo, an organism that lives off the sun. The trouble is it takes a heck of a lot of surface area to capture enough sunlight to make a meal. With leaves, plants are able to harness an enormous amount of solar energy relative to their size. Thick, fleshy humans, with our low surface-area-to-volume ratios, probably don’t have the necessary bandwidth. Synthetic biologist designers such as Christina Aga- Synthetic biologist designers such as about how to pakis, had spent a lot of time thinking animal cells that engineer new symbioses, including popular experi- can do photosynthesis. In a recent potential- ment, Christina Agapakis et al. explored timescale happen on a shorter ities of what would bacteria in ze- by the injection of photosynthetic die, and neither brafish embryos. The fish do not the bacteria. If E. coli - even dead ones – would would die within an hour. be injected the embryos the fish But when injecting photosynthetic bacteria, would still grow (18). A single vertebrate, the spotted salamander, has the spotted salamander, A single vertebrate, algae to solar-power its em- been proved to use our Normally, eggs. inside develop as they bryos destroy any foreign algae immune systems would our bodies. The salamander gets that tried to enter two possible reasons. Firstly, the away with it for its immune system has fully algae invade before salamanders have strange- developed. Secondly, account might This systems. immune inefficient ly lost body for their incredible ability to regenerate recognise also mean that they it could parts, but to other an- their own cells in a very different way the opened self-recognition lax this Perhaps imals. door for invading algae (17). backpack using light-harvesting pigments called called pigments light-harvesting using backpack use a hornet might And the oriental carotenoids. called xanthopterin utilizing a pigment similar trick, neither of But electricity. light energy to to convert lack are truly photosynthetic—both these creatures sugar. dioxide into ability to turn carbon the critical The Laboratory Planet n° 5 alien capitalism 09 P tations andslime matswhereonceforests, farms, times oftheAnthropos arelikemonocultural plan- of the tentacular, and the burning and extracting the world.Humanpeople are in/oftheholobiome feelers; theyarestudded with stingers;theytaste cut and bind everything in our way. Tentacles are ments of the tentacular without always seeking to must learn to live and die well in the entangle- recuperation, partialconnections,andresurgence poietic, notautopoietic.Allofuswhocareabout it is always sym-chthonic, not auto-chthonic, sym- home world,terra.TheChthuluceneisneverone; gerous, theChthuluceneistemporalityofour critters includinghumanpeople.Mixedanddan- dangerous, but plentiful earth for always evolving goingness—of awild,cultivatedanduncultivated, resurgence’, or‘feralbiologies’—i.e.,oftheon- is, andcanstillbefullofwhatAnnacalls‘Holocene diverse and luxuriating world. The Chthulucene was, ing’s kind)ofvitalitiesthatfeedthehungersa people, canstrengthentheresurgence(AnnaTs- death foraliving. Terranones,including human pain and mortality, but without practicing double and can live and die well, canflourish, not without motley ofothers.Allthesebeingsliveanddie, including itshumanpeople,whobecome-withavast The chthoniconescananddoinfuseallofterra, haunted voids. powers aredreadful.Doubledeathisinlovewith the rocksandchemistryofseas,surging tion is nothuman, to say the least. pocene, thechthoniconesareactivetoo;allac- a grimmockeryofearth’senergies. IntheAnthro- more andfossils,makingeverfossilsin they burn fossil-making man, who obsessively burns the tentacularonesarenuclearandcarbonfire; in seas, lands, airs, and waters. In the Anthropocene industrializers, super-transporters,andcapitalizers, double-death provokedbythearroganceof the chthonicentitiescananddojoininaccelerating thropocene (anamingIhavecometoneedtoo), Vinciane Despret and Hannah Arendt). In the An- how to practice curiosity without sadism (remember has noideahowtogovisiting,bepolite, the upwardlookingone. Thatupward-lookingone care aboutthethingthatcallsitselfAnthropos, like theuntamedandmortalMedusa;theydonot its kinarenotmother;theysnakeygorgones cal toeachother.Butforallthreeofus,Gaiaand Gaia, eventhoughtheirGaiasarenotatallidenti- tive, are kin to Bruno Latour’s and Isabelle Stengers’s The chthonicpowers,bothgenerativeanddestruc- haunt intentacularongoingdestruction. without ceasing. Killed but not gone, these fools will might be.Terranforceswillkillfoolswhoprovoke is nottheirgenre,butdemandingresponse-abilities dreadful. TheirresurgencecanbeHope pocket. Theyarenotfinished,andtheycanbe are destructive/generativeandinnoone’sback These powerssurgethroughallthatareterra.They on quantumfieldsinMeetingtheUniverseHalfway). ly diffractedtime-space(rememberKarenBarad and isyettocome.TheChthulucenearelentless- not. TheChthuluceneisanowthathasbeen,now, thick, fibrous, and lumpy “now,” which is ancient and and materialities. Kainosisthetemporalityof their diffracted,webbedtemporalities,spacialties, that areterra,ofthemyriadtentacularonesinall epoch isthekainos(-cene)ofongoingpowers compositions atstaketoandwitheachother.This by donnaharaway zoologist SANTA CRUZ FROM MANIFESTO CHTHULUCENE ifesto.” “My”Chthuluceneisthetimeofmortal erhaps itistimetowritea“ChthuluceneMan-

And, written into (1) powers oftheChthulucene,topowerresurgence made potentalliancesintimewiththegenerative cause multi species entities, including human people, in thetombsofAnthroposandhiskin,orbe- be becausedoubledeathreignseverywhere,even Capitalocene/Plantationocene “boundary event” question is,willthebrevityofAnthropocene/ tion ofthethickKainosisalreadycoming.Theonly leogene boundary),thananepoch.Anothermuta- ary event, like the K-Pg boundary (Cretaceous-Pa- The Anthropocenewillbeshort.Itismoreabound- ways. gal materialitiesandtemporalitiesinverydifferent and coralreefsflourished, whichwereallied tofun- «Endosymbiosis, tributetoLynn Margulis»,ShoshanahDubiner,2012,www.cybermuse.com flesh or sensitivity. , (Jean-Jacques Delfour, op. cit., pp.138-139) Delfour, ,(Jean-Jacques sensitivity. or flesh without “superman” a human, another of benefit in human, animal the human, living the human, archaic the annihilate nuclear to metaphysical: is project The (…) components biological their of them rid to being, their change To the being. human of transformation ontological the of that is project atomic the underlying desire true The (…) animals. other and plants water, air, on depends it as much so in condition human the of negation total the fundamentally is condition nuclear The condition. human terrestrial the transcends tasy fan- this other, the on and, exit emergency an is it hand one the on era: atomic the during emerged planet another for home, common only our Earth, the flee to desire the that significant is It restrial. sure: to be no more of this world, to plea- be an extrater - atomic of passion fundamental the is This l’humanité, L’échappée,p.80) de atomique situation la sur Réflexion nucléaire. condition La Delfour, (Jean-Jacques doses. lethal dose, lethal a these 80 tons of is plutonium are potentially 8 billion plutonium of gram a of lionth mil- 1 that Assuming bombs. atomic 8000 about for enough storage, in plutonium of tons 80 than (2011). Flyover of the factory in the Hague by Greenpeace In 2010 the factory in the Hague had more had Hague the in factory the 2010 In Planned inhabitability Make KinNotBabies! With thesestorytellers,mynextmanifestomustbe online gameNeverAlone.Watchthetrailer!(2) the ValleyofWind.AndthengotoInupiaq yao Miyazaki is another; remember is one of the best, in everything she wrote. Ha- The Chthulucene is full of storytellers. Ursula LeGuin root? Compost,notposthuman… so thatrichworldingsofoldandnewkindstook and partialhealinginthefaceofirreversibleloss, gees frompartsoftheformerSovietUnion. refu- war as such world, outside the from persons marginalized other and vagabonds some cludes in- population This later. there returned illegally or zone the from evacuated be to refused elderly) the (mostly people of Dozens appeared. have lynx rare extremely Even zone. began the outside and expanding enormously multiplied have beaver and elk/moose, Deer), Roe and boar wild wolves, (like animals Polesian traditional of Populations park. involuntary an of example classic a considered is nificant reduction of human impact, and the zone sig- to due flourished but survived, only not have to seems area the of nature The disaster. reactor sion zone around the site of the Chernobyl nuclear exclu- 30-km the is Zone Fourth The or Exclusion, Chernobyl Zone, The 30 Kilometer Zone, The Zone of The as to referred variously is which Alienation, Ukraine. AlienationZone,Pripyat, (2) http://neveralonegame.com/ (University ofMinnesotaPress,2016). versation,” inWinter2015,toappearManifestlyHaraway (1) Revisedfrom“DonnaHarawayandCaryWolfeinCon- h Zn of Zone The Nausicaä of that the focus of said activism should be preserving perversity – and compellingly, charmingly, spiteful. 10 Xenofeminist things for future generations, and that it should be It also alerts those of us with an interest in eco- framed primarily as an effort to protect ‘our’ chil- queer perspectives to some of the risks inherent dren’s rightful inheritance. For Edelman, the contem- in framing the future. Think of the imagery used Ecologies porary world is characterised by a reproductive to promote the People’s Climate March in London, futurism in which the ‘Child remains the perpetual New York, Paris and elsewhere. On posters spread horizon of every acknowledged politics, the fan- across urban transit networks, we encounter an (Re)producing tasmatic beneficiary of every political intervention’ ethereal nymph-child, clutching a toy windmill whilst (2004: p. 3). As he puts it, we encounter ‘the disci- staring wide-eyed into the future. In positioning plinary image of the Child […] on every side as the what we do as agitating on behalf of generations Futures Without lives, the speech, and the freedoms of adults face to come, we may unwittingly participate in the cult constant threat of legal curtailment out of defer- of the Child that is so central in determining which Reproductive ence to imaginary Children whose futures, as if they lives are prioritized and whose needs are seen to were permitted to have them except as they con- matter. However, the limitations of the argument for sist in the prospect of passing them on to Children refusal and withdrawal sketched out in No Future Futurity of their own, are construed as endangered by the are quite clear. What does it mean to cede the social disease as which queer sexualities register’ entire territory of politics to ‘family values’? What (Edelman, 2004: p. 19). The needs of adults – par- are the implications of celebrating ‘the act of re- by helen Hester (Laboria Cuboniks) philosopher ticularly non-reproductive adults – are constantly sisting enslavement to the future in the name of subordinated to those of children, as bearers of the having a life’ (Edelman, 2004: p. 30)? Living for the idea of the future. Edelman’s primary examples of now and saying ‘fuck the future’ hardly seems like he subject of xenofeminism is neither woman this phenomenon are rampant cultural homophobia an apt response to impending ecological disaster – nor human, if these terms are understood as T and so-called ‘pro-life’ activism. and indeed, the fact that Edelman’s analysis largely suggesting discrete entities snipped from the wid- proceeds via queer readings of classic Hollywood er fabric of technomaterial existence. Instead, xe- When we think the future, which is largely the ter- cinema suggests that such crises are not really within nofeminism is interested in the assemblages within rain of politics, he feels that we inevitably perpet- his purview. He’s not actually considering the brute which social agents are embedded. This is evident uate a culture laudatory of the child, and therefore reality of the contemporary Anthropocene here, so throughout our recent manifesto, “Xenofeminism: A supportive of ideologies of the family that are both perhaps it is unfair to frame his argument in these Politics for Alienation” – a text that seeks to be hetero- and homonormative. Whilst heterosexual terms; and yet, the undesirable implications of No very much alive to the entanglement and co-consti- sex or the monogamous, dyadic relationship form Future remain. tution of silicon-based and carbon-based actors. It are socially sanctioned via the ‘alibi’ of biological makes frequent reference to current technoscientific and social reproduction, the queer comes to rep- Nina Power is amongst those who have sketched out conditions, from online solidarity networks, to the resent the ‘violent undoing of meaning, the loss of objections to this account of reproductive futurity. hyperstitional phenomenon of the stock market, to identity and coherence, the unnatural access to jou- She points out some of the ways in which Edel- suggestive but embryonic advances in open source issance’ (Edelman, 2004: p. 132). It is the irredeem- man’s seemingly radical position plays into existing medicine. In so doing, the manifesto points to some able, unrecoverable other. The only proportionate structures of neoliberalism, remarking that ‘capital- of the many ways in which technological alteration response to this state of affairs is, for Edelman, ism depends upon the reproduction of sameness in might generate forms of radical alterity. ‘Nature’, refusal – the refusal of politics, the refusal of the the guise of difference, the idea that there is no meanwhile, emerges as a recurrent force in the text future, the refusal of the Child. Those beyond the alternative, and [that] no future (in the sense of – not as a naturalizing or essentializing underpin- sanctified confines of heteronormativity are, accord- new ways of living) is possible’ (2009: p. 2). She ning for gender and eco politics, but as an always ing to his analysis, to embrace the death drive and also comments that Edelman’s conflation of politics- already technologized space of contestation that to become what reproductive futurism has already with-the-future-with-the-child does not hold in ev- fundamentally shapes lived experiences. ‘Nature’ decided that they are – just a bunch of selfish ery situation: ‘the question of a “queer” (that is, (not least as it is manifested in gendered embod- queers. non-futural) resistance to communal relations has in iment) is viewed as a space of experimentation – fact been an issue for various twentieth century po- not a fact to be accepted but a terrain of negotia- Edelman’s work is quite clearly a polemic, gleefully litical movements. There have been various kinds tion to be actively contested for. This is captured in spooking the straights and denouncing the ‘fascism of ‘queer’ resistance to the organising principle the manifesto’s ultimate call to action: ‘In the name of the baby’s face’ (2004: p. 75). As such it is per- of heteronormativity, which have at the same time of feminism, ‘Nature’ shall no longer be a refuge versely seductive – not to mention seductive in its been explicitly political projects’ (2009: p. 8). Pow- of injustice […] If nature is unjust, change nature!’ (Laboria Cuboniks, 2015: n.p.). I am starting with this outline both in order to emphasize the position from which I am articulating my ideas, and because a lot of what I want to discuss here takes this position as an implicit reference point. Xenofeminism, as a political and theoretical project, is distinctly future-oriented, tracing emerging developments in technology and the post-human in order to imagine a world beyond current un- derstandings of gender, race, and class. However, aside from our (relatively brief) reflections upon globalized technocultures, our work has yet to real- The Laboratory Planet n° 5 ly engage with the Anthropocene. To put it another way, we have been theorising the future (not to mention various senses of ‘Nature’) without reflect- ing on the conditions for biological existence upon which any future-oriented project would obviously depend. With this paper, I want to start to rectify this framing our queer, technomaterialist transfemi- nism in terms of ecology and debates about human population. The points I’m making here are intend- ed to be provocative rather than prescriptive, and they are certainly looser and more gestural than

I would like. However, the ideas contained here alien capitalism mark an early gesture in a commitment to a longer-term project – one that I hope will be viewed as an invitation to discuss, engage, and construct a Human population growth Species Extinction better xenofeminism. 7 60,000 6 50,000 The title of this piece is ‘(Re) producing Futures 5 Without Reproductive Futurity’. It takes as its start- 4 40,000 ing point the work of the queer theorist Lee Edel- 30,000 man who, in his 2004 book No Future: Queer Theory 3 and the Death Drive, famously takes issue with ‘the 2 20,000 future’ as a heteronormative construct. I’m going 1 10,000 to be using Edelman’s work to point to the limits people (billion) 0 Extinction numbers 0 of some of the discourses that most commonly cir- culate around climate change activism – namely, 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000 18001830 1860 1900 1920 1950 1980 2010 11 er gives the example of the kibbutz movement – to which we might add numerous forms of eco queer activism and theory. Alexandra Pirici and Raluca Voinea’s work on the “Manifesto for Gynecene” is one helpful signpost here – a project that advo- cates for a move towards care, whilst indicating that any imaging of the future is not merely about protecting our children but is in fact key to fostering a collective politics. (…) In acting on behalf of future generations, we must be careful not to foster ‘the supreme value of species survival as a discursive technology of compulso- ry heterosexuality’ (Sheldon, 2009: n.p.). As I have suggested, to the extent that we frame our activism as protecting the earth for ‘our’ children, we risk promoting restrictive, exclusionary, and xeno-inhos- pitable notions of whose existence counts. Most obviously, by indirectly privileging lines of genetic de- At the moment of refugees crisis in Europe, Denmark prefers to produce a xenopolitics of blond heads scent and cultural inheritance, such approaches are with the campaign ‘Do it for Mom!’ to encourage white Danes to go on holiday in a desperate bid to distinctly speciesist – neglectful of the many oth- help boost the country’s falling birth rate. The campaign is aimed at older parents and recommends er forms of life upon which environmental change that they contribute to their adult children’s getaways so that they can get a grandchild ‘nine months might impact. How, then, can we think reproduction later’. – even just in the sense of ensuring the survival of others into the future – without also reproducing the and one which prompts us to rethink the existences a queer activism underpinned by the enabling af- worst of reproductive futurity? and relationships that our politics tend to privilege. fect of hope. Indeed, the judicious mobilization of ‘Kin’ is the concept that Haraway mobilizes in an such a future-oriented affect may be necessary if At this point, I would like to turn to the work of Don- attempt cultivate this – an ‘assembling sort of word’ we wish to create conditions that are hospitable to na Haraway, who has done so much over the years that speaks of solidarity beyond reproductive fu- re-engineering a present that, for many human and in terms of helping us to view our species within turism (2015: p. 161). In calling for the making of non-human actors, is unbearable. Entertaining the its wider biological and technomaterial context. In kin, rather than the making of babies, we speak of possibility of emancipatory projects beyond repro- an article for Environmental Humanities published a less naturalized, a less inward-looking, and less ductive futurity is important, I have argued, if we earlier this year, Haraway offers us a new slogan parochial form of both intra- and inter-species alli- wish to develop a xenofeminist-inflected collective for an era of climate crisis: ‘Make kin not babies!’ ance (and as an ethos – a transmissible protocol for eco-politics – that is, if we wish to fight for the con- (2015: p. 161). This is, quite clearly, a slogan of conceiving of the world – this can be adopted and tinued existence of all our alien kin. If xenofeminism two parts: perhaps the easiest to grasp directive practiced by both parents and non-parents alike). wishes to develop a politics fit for the Anthropo- is the suggestion that we, as a species, reduce our Such a call very much resonates with the ‘xeno’ in cence, it obviously needs to engage further with birth rate. Official UN population projections now ‘xenofeminism’, I think. this issue of climate change and to insist upon the suggest that the number of people inhabiting the myriad interconnections between capitalism, gender planet will pass the 10 billion mark by the end of We do need to qualify this rallying call not to make politics, population, and ecology. With Muñoz, then, the century, contributing to significant problems in babies, however. When Edelman discusses what it I assert that we must ‘vacate the here and now for ‘food availability and affordability’ (2011: n.p.). means to ‘resist the appeal of futurity, to refuse a then and there. Individual transports are insuffi- Studies suggest that this situation may be significant- the temptation to reproduce’ (2004: p. 17), he ap- cient. We need to engage in a collective temporal ly exacerbated by the environmental crisis, with cli- pears to rather sidestep the fact that biological distortion’ (2009: p. 185). mate change resulting in global crop yield losses of procreation is not always an expressly planned or up to 30% by 2080 (Hallegatte et al, 2016: p. 4). deliberately sought for process. Even if the provi- There are understandable fears that the carrying sion of abortion was secure and the procedure itself Bibliography capacity of particular regions may be exceeded, culturally de-stigmatized, it seems likely that many Edelamn, L., 2004. No Future: Queer Theory and the alien capitalism as local environments approach the maximal pop- pregnancies not chosen in advance would still, for Death Drive. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. ulation load that they can support. This would risk various complex and sometimes personal reasons, Laboria Cuboniks, 2015. Xenofeminism: A Politics detrimental effects not just on human lives, but on be allowed to continue to term. And of course, who for Alienation. [Online]. [Accessed 23 Nov. 2015]. other species as well – hence Haraway’s suggested would want to step in to forcibly prevent people Available from: http://www.laboriacuboniks.net check on fertility. ‘Over a couple hundred years from having children? I can hardly imagine Har- Hallegatte, S., et al, 2016. Shock Waves: Managing from now,’ she muses, ‘maybe the human people away advocating for the imposition of fertility con- the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty. World of this planet can again be numbered two or three trol upon the unwilling masses! Her demand must Bank Group: Washington. [Online]. [Accessed 15 billion or so, while all along the way being part of instead be seen as a call for the fostering of an Jan. 2016]. Available from: https://openknowl- increasing well being for diverse human beings and ideological shift – that is, for an ambitious attempt edge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/ other critters as means and not just ends’ (2015: p. to wrest hegemony away from reproductive futu- 10986/22787/9781464806735.pdf 162). rity. Indeed, her vision of population reduction en- Haraway, D., 2015. Anthropocene, Capitalocene, (…) compasses centuries rather than decades. As such, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin. Environ- The Laboratory Planet n° 5 In the areas of immigration, technological devel- we need to marry any advocacy for the reduction mental Humanities, 6, pp. 159 – 165. [Online]. [Ac- opment, and regenerative labour, then, one sees of human population size with a commitment to act- cessed 23 Nov. 2015]. Available from: http://envi- the potential benefits of making kin not babies. In ing in solidarity with the impregnatable and with ronmentalhumanities.org/arch/vol6/6.7.pdf the longer term, Haraway’s injunction could gen- caregivers. This is especially crucial in the case of Muñoz, J. E., 2009. Cruising Utopia: The Then and erate further emancipatory effects. To eschew the those whose access to the social capital of parent- There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York Uni- deliberate extension of one’s genetic line – to en- hood is drastically limited – the world’s displaced, versity Press. gage in the pollarding of one’s family tree – is racialized, impoverished, queer, and otherwise stig- Pirici, A., and R. Voinea, 2015. Manifesto for the to rethink modes of intimacy, sociability, and soli- matized subjects. Gynecene – Sketch of a New Geological Era. [On- darity beyond the nexus of the nuclear family. In line]. [Accessed 23 Nov. 2015]. Available from: moving away from discourses of reproductive futu- There is reason to hope, perhaps, that a reorienta- http://ro.tranzit.org/file/MANIFESTO-for-the-Gy- rity, those parts of the social fabric which have ab- tion away from reproductive futurity and towards necene.pdf ject-ed non-reproductive subjects as harbingers of various models of kinship and xeno-solidarity might Power, N., 2009. Non-Reproductive Futurism: the death drive will be unpicked and rewoven into actually encourage a deeper hospitality towards Rancière’s rational equality against Edelman’s body something less exclusionary and more hospitable to these groups – that a generalized cultural rejection apolitic. Borderlands, 8 (2), pp. 1 – 16. [Online]. difference. This brings us on to the second part of of the family line might be framed less as the dis- [Accessed 23 Nov. 2015]. Available from: http:// Haraway’s proposed slogan for the Anthropocene missal of parents and guardians, and more as an www. www.borderlands.net.au/vol8no2_2009/ – making kin. This is the productive moment hitched act of solidarity with new arrivals of all kinds (from power_futurism.pdf to her rejection of the current order. migrants, to new caregivers, to the very young). Sheldon, R., 2009. Reproductive Futurism and Fem- Indeed, there is historical evidence to suggest that inist Rhetoric: Joanna Russ’ We Who Are about To... In the 2015 article, she declares that ‘If there is to the lowering of birth rates in countries in the global Femspec, 10 (1), pp. 19-35. [Online]. [Accessed 23 be multispecies ecojustice, which can also embrace north does not lead wholly and exclusively to an Nov. 2015]. Available from: http://www.femspec. diverse human people, it is high time that feminists aggressive restitution of ‘family values’, but may org/samples/sheldon.html exercise leadership in imagination, theory, and ac- also generate markedly different conditions. United Nations Department of Social and Econom- tion to unravel the ties of both genealogy and kin, (…) ic Affairs, 2011. World population to exceed 10 and kin and species’ (p. 161). In other words, cur- As Nina Power and Jose Esteban Muñoz suggest, billion. United Nations. [Online.] [Accessed 23 Nov. rent ecological conditions demand a feminism that however, there is more to the future than reproduc- 2015]. Available from: https://www.un.org/devel- practices ‘better care of kinds-assemblages (not tive futurity. It is possible to have a politics beyond opment/desa/en/news/population/ species one at a time)’ (Haraway, 2015: p. 162), the horizon of the family, and it is possible to have population-exceed-10-billion.html alien 12 The Reparation or The Nostromo of the Earth by Émilie Notéris text worker

Hester: Can I call you ‘mom’? Chanel: What? Hester: Please? I feel so loved and protected by all of you. Chanel: Wait, you wanna call all of us ‘mom’? That’s insane. Chanel #5: And super confusing. Ripley goes from Alien survivor to Alien mother. This painting by Jska Priebe casts the action heroine Chanel #3: Actually, it’s a new pop culture term where as a saintly Madonna, cradling her Xenomorph baby. young women, desperately in need of role models, call other girls they look up to ‘mom.’ Lorde’s fans call her connection can be made between Buckminster Full- lution“ (4), thus reaffirming the power of positive mom. er’s earth-ship and Ridley Scott’s mother-ship. As affects to confront catastrophe. What, if not fleeing, Scream Queens, episode 2 saison 1, « Hell Week », the philosopher Mathieu Potte-Bonneville accurately should the steps of our dance be? september 2015. observes, to study Alien as a blockbuster situates We could look for help in anthropology. For the n a novel entitled “From a flight over London“, it “in the ecosystem of the imaginary, in the food Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Cas- Ipublished in 1950, Virginia Woolf delicately de- chain of possible narratives (1)“. The catastrophic tro, (5) our contemporary world is saturated with scribed a flight over the city of London and how this scenarios of the blockbusters run in parallel to real humanity, considered dangerous by the Amerindi- distance from the Earth modified her way of seeing world climatic scenarios, the nourishment proposed ans, due to this humanity itself, in the metaphorical the world, just as the first images of our planet seen for visual and theoretical absorption is unchanged sense of the term. He proposes an anthropomor- from space, in 1972, shook our vision, awaking the and moves from one point to another along this phism rather than an anthopocentrism, based on the feeling of a global responsibility. An adventure food chain, calling for a new reading of its list principle that the best way of feeling connected to told with precision and emotion that evaporates im- of favourite ingredients, for the creation of a new the future of our Earth is by infusing it with human mediately on landing, «in reality, the flight didnt recipe. qualities (a concern that stems directly from anthro- take place». Today its not possible to pretend the If an instruction manual exists today it is, without pomorphism). Anthropocentrism on the other hand flight didn’t take place, as if we didn’t know the doubt, the “Universal Declaration of the rights of leads to the errors of waste and misuse. Viveiros de responsibility that weighs on us and the distance Mother Earth“ written by Amerindian peoples in Castro proposes adapting Winnicott’s key concept from purely economic and material interests that 2012 in response to the Universal Declaration of of the sufficiently good mother – rather than the it demands. We still need to identify what exactly Human Rights. In Ridley Scott’s film the instruction perfect and the horrific – to that of Mother Nature, this responsibility is. manual or navigation program is called “Mother“. of Gaia. A sufficiently good Earth rather than a So we propose a narrative and theoretical launch Everything in the topography of the places and the perfect one. The search for perfection leads without so that nobody can complain later that the flight allusions implicit in the aesthetic of the film invest the failure to psychosis, even to horror. spaceship with its archaic maternal characteristics, never took place. (1) - Mathieu Potte-Bonneville, Sons of a pitch. Prequels, se- The change brought on by the use of the term ‘An- as the feminist theoretician Barbara Creed observes quels, Aliens et autres rejetons, in Blockbuster, Philosophie et thropocene’ for a geological period, the result of in the chapter on Alien in her book The Monstrous cinéma, dir. Laura Odello, Les Prairies Ordinaires, 2013. the impact of humans on the Earth, – even though Feminine (2). «Although the archaic mother as a vis- (2) - Barbara Creed, Horror and the Archaic Mother, in The the term has not yet been validated by the scientif- ible figure does not appear inAlien , her presence Monstruous Feminine. Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, Routledge, forms a vast backdrop for the enactment of all 1993. ic community of the UISG which will meet in Cape (3) - “Although the archaic mother as a visible figure does not Town in 2016 – requires a redefinition and a theo- the events. She is there in the images of birth, the appear in Alien, her presence forms a vast backdrop for the retical and feeling critique of ecology. representation of the primal scene, the womb-like enactment of all the events. She is there in the images of birth, imagery, the long winding tunnels leading to inner the représentation of the primal scène, the womb-like imagery, chambers, the rows of hatching eggs, the body of the long winding tunnels leading to inner chambers, the rows Although feminism has brought a lot to ecology of hatching eggs, the body of the mother-ship, the voice of the through ecofeminist writing (including theory and the mother-ship, the voice of the life-support system, life-support system, and the bith of the alien.“ science fiction), we can imagine going beyond and the birth of the alien.». (4) - Marcel Détienne, Apollon le couteau à la main, cité par Mother Earth in its original (archaic) sense through The encoded priority, as will be revealed later to Bruno Latour, « Gaïa, figure (enfin profane) de la nature » in Queer theory which upsets gender tags such as the the crew, is in fact to bring the alien back to Earth, Face à Gaïa, huit conférences sur le nouveau régime climatique, even at their own expense. The true mission was la Découverte, 2005. idea of Nature. As far as we’re concerned, the fo- (5) - Ynestra King, “If I Can’t Dance in Your Revolution, I’m Not cus on “being“ rather than “having“ which initiates present from the start as a subtext. When the film Coming“, 1989. the queering of ecology, authorizes the questioning opens with the awakening of the 7 crew members (6) Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Economic Development, Anthro- of «human nature» itself and suggests the prolifer- to reply to a signal, recognized too late as a warn- pomorphism, and the Principle of Reasonable Sufficiency in ed. ing rather than a SOS, it opens with the true mission Pasquale Galiardi, Anne Marie Reijnen, & Philipp Valentini, ation of new human natures, as narratives. Protecting Nature, Saving Creation, Ecological Conflicts, Reli- The Laboratory Planet n° 5 of the flight, to make contact with or ingest the alien gious Passions, and Political Quandaries, Palgrave Macmillan, These new human natures could be considered as on board the mother ship. It’s here that the figure 2013. alien (transformation of ways of seeing, modifica- of Gaia is superimposed over the Mother tion of points of view or observation, unsettling po- of Alien “Three times, Earth gives decisive sitions …) as we remember the following definition: advice […]: she insinuates, she indicates by «Alien, person foreign to a context; animal or plant words rather than signs, she also knows how species which appears in a context not its own.» Is to say everything clearly when necessary, Earth the context of humans? Did man and woman but she always foresees, she conceives the just appear or were they created as the old stories designs that orientate decisively the unfold- tell us? Should we, in the redefinition that the idea ing of events“. of the Anthropocene is provoking, consider respon- How then to hear this message and carry out a healing reading of the horrific fiction sibility in terms of belonging? alien capitalism proposed by Ridley Scott, leaving aside the One of the films that obviously includes, in its title double paranoic warning (that of Mother as well as its theme, the problem of Mother Earth and the film itself)? What dance to invent (or the mother ship) and the alien, is the horror film then, following Bruno Latour who, in his intro- Alien: The Eighth Passenger which was released in duction to Face of Gaia (3) starts his ques- 1979. We find ourselves, from the beginning of the tioning with the anatomy of a fleeing dance film, inside a Mother-Ship-Earth (to borrow a line which, in its rush, never stops looking over from Richard Buckminster Fuller’s work). In Operat- its shoulder, giving birth to another monster ing Manual for Spaceship Earth (published in 1969, even more terrifying than the one it seeks 10 years before the film), he reminds us that «the to escape? This second monster, the double spaceship earth was so brilliantly conceived and of the first, is none other than paranoia. The arranged that as far as we know humans have ecofeminist theoretician Ynestra King uses been able to live there during 2 million years as the title of one her most important texts without ever realizing that they were on board a a quote from the anarchist Emma Goldman: El Abrazo de Amor del Universo by spaceship», a ship nonetheless, without a manual. A “If I cant dance I don’t want your revo- Frida Kahlo (1949) Alien Citizens Who is who’s alien ? a political question Let’s speculate about passports being made and is- While the issue of non-citizens is often equated to the sued to alien entities. Would they only be issued by problem of statelessness, other sources consider that the little green men that Men in Black are taking care the status of non-citizen in both Latvia and Estonia of? Wouldn’t they also be useful to the “unidentified is unique and has not existed previously in interna- migrants” and sans-papiers who spread over Europe tional law. “Non-citizens” of Latvia enjoy a benefit not just like UFO’s? The field of questions opened by the afforded to citizens of being able to travel to both the notion of alien also opens the question of the limits Schengen Area (where citizens of Latvia can travel vi- of political institutions, and what Hannah Arendt sa-free, too) as well as Russia, without the need for a called non-humans; having no status, and therefore visa.” no rights. Gathered together at the border, from now Wikipedia, retrieved january 20, 2016 are economical migrants, political refugees, climate refugees, cosmic refugees, interstellar castaways and inter-dimensional survivors.

bi-national in Schengen space : Are you Frontex ? the Latvian Non-Citizens case Technological liberty, algorithmic equality, Non-citizens in Latvian law are individuals who are racial fraternity not citizens of Latvia or any other country but, who, in accordance with the Latvian law “Regarding the status of citizens of the former USSR who possess neither Latvian nor other citizenship”, have the right to a non-citizen passport issued by the Latvian government as well as other specific rights. Approximately two thirds of them are ethnic Russians, followed by ethnic Belarusians, ethnic Ukrainians, ethnic Poles and ethnic Lithuanians.

Children born after Latvia reestablished independence (August 21, 1991) to parents who are both non-citizens are entitled to citizenship upon request of at least one of the parents.

others in different frames of reference . . . To treat others as we would desire to be treated might well mean their destruc-

alien capitalism tion. We must treat them as they desire to be treated.” According to Haley, we can project only one principle of human law onto our possible future relations with ETI: “the stark concept of absolute equity.”

It is clear the metalegal precepts Haley proposed are squarely rooted in natural law theory and flow from Kant’s Cate- gorical Imperative in a largely deductive manner rather than being drawn empiri- cally from actual human legal institutions

The Laboratory Planet n° 5 in an inductive fashion. Despite this, Haley acknowledged the obvious anthropocen- Alien Citizens, tric limits of natural law theory but could not ultimately divorce Metalaw from this 60th year of Metalaw intellectual construct. This failure led former Smithsonian general counsel George Metalaw is a legal concept closely related Robinson to note that the cultural concept to the scientific Search for Extraterrestrial of rules or law is itself anthropocentric (2). Intelligence (SETI). First conceived by pio- Robinson urged space lawyers, when en- neering space lawyer Andrew G. Haley in gaging in metalegal research, to adopt an 1956, Metalaw was the term Haley coined empirical approach similar to that used by to refer to fundamental legal precepts of cultural anthropologists. Robinson proposed theoretically universal application to all in- an empirical analysis of Metalaw by telligences, human and extraterrestrial. studying human values formed with respect to totally alien concepts and potential sit- The Green Girl by Jack Williamson (1930) is one the first In 1956, Haley published an article enti- uations, in particular “in all bio-ecological “green” alien occurrence in science-fiction and great trans- tled “Space Law and Metalaw – A Synoptic and cultural regimes wherein categories formation litterature. View” (1), in which Haley first proposed his of relationships occur and may be distin- “Melvin Dane has been seeing a vision of a green girl since “Interstellar Golden Rule”: Do unto others as guished.” he was a child. Images of her came over the ether. Is she they would have you do unto them. Haley just fantasy? Or a reality that managed to cross time and rejected the traditional formulation of the (1) - Andrew G. Haley, “Space law and space? And now, with the Earth under threat of extinction, Golden Rule as articulated by philosophers Metalaw – A Synoptic View”, Harvard Law will Melvin ever meet that girl of his dreams? With an alien through the ages (from Confucius to Aristotle Record 23 (November 8, 1956) force trying to bring Earth back to the Ice Age, Melvin and his to Rabbi Hillel and Jesus to Abdullah Ansari) (2) - G.S. Robinson, “Ecological foundations foster father, scientist Sam Walden, embarked on a heroic because, Haley said, in Metalaw “we deal of Haley‟s Metalaw”, Journal of the Brit- quest to save their world. Their adventures takes them to with all frames of existence – with sapient ish Interplanetary Society 22 (1969) 266- the unexplored and totally unexpected world beneath the beings different in kind. We must do unto 274. ocean”. note 1 specifically, it signifies the possible relationships it to create its own sign)ficance: one which is written in xeno can establish with future states of itself. Its ‘value’ the only terms available to it, namely future states is the relation between what it was worth, as an of itself. Xenomoney is thus a certain kind of meta- economy index number in relation to some fixed and arbi- sign. Recall that the scandal of paper money for its trary past state taken as an origin, and what the detractors was its ability to increase the supply of xeno-money market judges it will be worth at different points money, in effect to create unlimited money, at the It was in the early 1970s that a fundamen- in the future. For what it sign)fies to be a market same time as the promise that it carried, to deliver “tal shift took place in the financial practices variable, and for it to be ‘futured’in this sense as a palpable, uncreatable specie, denied this possib- that underpin and create the circulation of mon- continuous time- occupying sign, xenomoney must be lity. Xenomoney, by making no promise to deliver ey- signs. What occurred then was an historically bought and sold in a market that monetises time; a anything, avoids such double dealing. Its scandal, if unique confluence and structural integration of four market in which there exist financial instruments that, such exists, is the fact that it is a sign which creates separate monetary phenomena, none of which was by commoditising the difference between the value itself out of the future. novel, but which together created a multi- billion of present money (spot rate) and its future value dollar a day global money market and a radi- (forward rate), allow ‘money’ to have a single time- This reflexivity of xenomoney is already implied by cally new highly volatile, world monetary order. A bound identity. In the early 1970s, the appropriate its independence, that is money governed by purely realistic description of the workings of these phe- instruments, that is tradeable financial futures and financial dynamics, from the physically determined nomena --floating rates of exchange, an inconvert- options contracts, came into prominence in the Chi- constraints of underlying trade. (Brian Rotman, Sig- ible world currency, the growth of off- shore money cago Financial Futures Market. (…) [Xenomoney] nifying Nothing: The Semiotics of Zero (New York: in the Euromarkets, the emergence of secondary being floating and inconvertible, is forced as a sign St. Martin’s Press,1987) markets in financial futures/options contractswould need much esoteric discussion that lies far outside the scope of this [text] (…) For ‘Euro’ and “dollars’ one should write ‘xeno’ end ‘money’ respectively. The Eurodollar has long since shed its attachment to Europe. It is, in fact, no longer geographically located but circulates within an electronic global market which, though still called the Eurodollar market, is now the international capital market. And its attachment to dollars is denominational rather than actual: not only can all currencies be swapped instantaneously in and out of the dollar, but there is also a growing volume of other instruments within this new market, such as Eurobonds, issued in Yen, Deutschemarks, Ecus and so on. (…) As a sign one can say that xenomoney, floating, and inconvertible to anything outside itself, signifies itself. More

xeno note 2 economy archeology of capital gold, metals and solar economy The Extraterrestrial origin of Capital (a): Earthly yield of the Solar Economy Breathing, a manifestation of the sun’s shining, Lcontrols the multiplication of terrestrial organisms. The production of organisms depends on the intensity of light and heat from the Sun.

“The movement of multiplication is the reflection of a sun ray. Indeed, breathing itself, the gaseous exchange between life and the surrounding atmosphere, is a manifestation of the energy of this same ray” (1).

“The change provoked by the multiplication always Planetary Resources and 3D Systems turned a meteorite into a 3D print. The space mining legislation signed takes place rhythmically. This change corresponds into law by President Barack Obama gives U.S. space firms the right to own and sell natural resources mined to the annually repeated oscillations of the environ- from asteroids and other space bodies. ment. It is closely connected to the rhythmical move- The act represents a full-frontal attack on settled principles of space law which are found in international ments of the Ocean. These movements of the Ocean, agreements including the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and the Moon Agreement of 1979. tides, temperature changes, saltiness of evaporation, Planetary Resources CEO Chris Lewicki believes we’ll need to figure out how to build and manufacture in space. intensity of sunlight, are all of cosmic origin” (2). “Instead of manufacturing something in an Earth factory and putting it on a rocket and shipping it to space,” Lewicki mused, “what if we put a 3D printer into space and everything we printed with it we got from space?” The Extraterrestrial origin of Capital (b): Metalization layer four meters thick. a metal very similar to gold, was detected which old, and numerous other precious metals such enabled them to calculate the weight of meteoric Gas platinum, palladium or iridium, is of extra- Although the earth’s core abounds with gold, this matter on Earth. terrestrial origin. Two hundred million years after metal has become valuable because it is rare on Matthias Willbold: “Our work shows that the majori- its formation, the Earth was heavily bombarded the earth’s surface. Mathias Willbold and his team ty of precious metals upon which our economies and by meteorites containing different alien materials, from the School of Earth Sciences in Bristol (UK) ex- numerous strategic industrial processes are based amongst which was gold. This theory was confirmed plain the presence of gold on the earth’s surface by appeared by coincidence when the Earth was struck in September 2011 by a team of geochemists from a “late bombardment” of smaller meteorites, some by about twenty billion billions of tons of asteroids”. the University of Bristol (3) who became interested in 3.8 billion years ago. The particles of gold which the role of celestial bombardments in the formation then landed stayed on the surface, in the places of the planet. The collision with celestial bodies as where they are currently mined. (1) Vernadsky, La biosphère, Alcan, p. 37 (2) Vernadsky, La biosphère, Alcan, p. 172 big as the Moon led to an explosion of heat which (3) Where does all the gold come from?, http://www.bris. caused the precious metals to melt. This magma was To prove the hypothesis Mathias Willbold and Tim ac.uk/news/2011/7885.html. Voir aussi Matthias Willbold, then drawn to the earth’s core. An incredible trea- Elliot have compared the composition of contem- Tim Elliott & Stephen Moorbath, The tungsten isotopic compo- sure now sleeps at 3000 kilometers beneath our porary rocks and others over 4 billion years old, sition of the Earth’s mantle before the terminal bombardment, feet: according to scientists there is enough gold in preexistent to the main meteorite bombardment. An Nature, 477, 195–198 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7363/full/na- the earth’s core to cover the whole planet with a infinitesimal difference in the quantity of tungsten, ture10399.html note 3 ferent scale. It does not use 0/1 Boolean algebra, xeno but rather logic as basic calculus, while processors move around a computational space – they do not economy take fixed positions. Moreover, computations are driven by an abstract “value” – not by an operat- ASIH-computer, Adam Smith’s ing system. This computational nature is very much Invisible Hand computer like a second side of a coin, or another dimension adeusz Szuba (University of Cracow), author of of a market. This idea leads to the perception and Tthe model for the phenomenon of collective in- formalization of Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand (ASIH) telligence, proposes a theory - that Adam Smith’s as a computer: ASIH-computer. It is a self-program- Invisible Hand metaphor is an occurring phenom- ming computer able to perform computations not enon that can be formalized, simulated and most only for market optimization & stabilization, but probably used to propose all-new tools to analyze also acting as “discoverer” of e.g. new technologies and predict markets in the future. necessary for market (technical optimization). The The proposed theory claims that the Invisible Hand ASIH-computer is specific for each market, since it is a symptom of the existence of another dimension reflects the given market’s nature and mentality of of a market, which is of computational nature. A agents. There is also a high probability, that social market and its agents are unaware of this, because behavior rules can be discovered by the ASIH-com- only piece(s), or result(s) of this symptom can be puter (social optimization). Threads of ASIH-com- observed. In this dimension, the nature of a mar- puter calculations are not visible by a single agent, ket and agents creates a complete, programmable since the agent participates only in one or just a computer on the platform of brains of agents and few steps of such calculations. Only economists can the physical structure of the market. This computer identify the architecture of this computer and what is self-programming and since it exists and functions computations are performed. Perceiving a market on the platform of market agents’ brains, results of as “thinking subject”, will lead to the discovery of computations are outputted via the brains of agents completely different tools for market analysis and and represent themselves as the behavior of a mar- prediction. It is foreseen that firstly economists, with ket. the help of computations theorists, will construct a simulation model of an ASIH-computer for a given “The ENIAC ( Electronic Numerical Integrator According to this theory, the Invisible Hand is much market (approximation). Next, this model will be And Computer) was the first general-purpose more powerful and universal than Adam Smith and investigated on what it can calculate, how quickly computer, a digital Turing-complete machine contemporary economists even expected. and in what manner it reacts to market disturbanc- built in secret during World War Two. In the fall “Adam Smith’s statements provide a clear hint on es, etc. The ASIH-computer concept will imply much of 1945 Manhattan Project computer scientists how to transform humans as market elements, into theoretical research. In general, the ASIH-comput- went to design a calculation that would deter- “business-thinking and planning virtual processor”. er is similar to swarm-computer (ants, honeybees); mine the likelihood of being able to develop a Using this processor under concept of molecular however, agents are much more intelligent”. (”For- fusion weapon. Edward Teller, the “Martian of model of computations, we are able to convert a mal and computational model for A. Smith’s Invisi- Science”, used the ENIAC results to prepare a market into a specific, nondeterministic, parallel ble Hand paradigm as basis for all new tools for report in the spring of 1946 that answered this computer. It is an altogether different kind of com- market analysis and prediction”, Tadeusz Szuba, question in the affirmative”. puter, when comparing it to its digital counterpart – communication at the University of Toulouse 1, may it is most probably much more powerful, but on dif- 5, 2015). Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand of Jupiter

“The history of capitalism is an invasion from the future by an artificial intelligent space that must assemble itself entirely from its enemy’s resource” (Nick Land, « Machinic Desire », Textual Practice, vol. 7:3, 1993, p. 479) n The History of Astronomy (written before 1758) IAdam Smith speaks of the invisible hand, to which ignorants refer to explain natural phenomena otherwise unexplainable: Fire burns, and water refreshes; heavy bodies descend, and lighter substances fly upwards, by the necessity of their own nature; nor was the invisible hand of Jupiter ever apprehended to be employed in those matters. In The Invisible Hand of Jupiter (1971), Alexan- der L. Macfie provides an insight on Adam Smith’s conception of the relationship between divine guidance, the system of nature and human behavior. For image from Stefania Vitali, James B. Glattfelder, Macfie the Scottish Enlightement had made interpre- and Stefano Battiston (2011) The Network of Global Corporate Control tations of history close to the one of Giambattista Vico who was separating the age of gods, the age of heroes and the age of men. For Macfie, Adam Mushroom-master of Global Corporate Control Smith’s Invisible Hand of Jupiter symbolises the ca- The control class is that which, consciously or unconsciously contributes to achieve the pricious and uncomprehensible intervention of Antiq- goals of the alien capitalism. The graph uses a Swiss study that carried out the first uity’s gods, linked to an age of “superstition”. Adam investigation about the architecture of the international ownership network, along with Smith’s definition of the “invisible hand” would be the calculation of the level of control held by each global players. This study shows that, then more suitable to the idea of God or Supreme on a sample of about 30 million economic actors contained in the Orbis 2007 database, Being that developed in the XVIIIth century and to 737 holders accumulate overriding control over 80% of the value of all transnational the conservative force that gravitates towards natu- corporations, and almost 40% of 43 060 global transnational corporations are controlled ral order disturbed by self interested individuals. In by a group of 147 companies with interlocking interests, this group has virtually complete such a way that it becomes, in the Theory of Moral control on itself. Much of this control is drained to a tight heart of financial institutions, Sentiments (1759) and in the Wealth of Nations most of the first fifty transnational being transnational financial sector. (1776), the instrument of “the author of the nature 80% of world profits are captured by a “mushroom-master” of 147 companies linked by who governs and animate the entire machine of the cross shareholdings. In these 147 companies, is a financial coalescence, since 75% of these Universe”. For Macfie the invisible-hand passage in 147 companies are financial. Wer find there Barclays Bank, JP Morgan Chase, Merrill the Theory of Moral Sentiments is an effort to bind Lynch, UBS, Bank of New York, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs. (cf. Stefania Vitali, the theological ethical and economic arguments into James B. Glattfelder, and Stefano Battiston (2011), The Network of Global Corporate Con- one comprehensive system of thought of the “large trol. PLoS ONE 6(10): e25995. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0025995) system of nature”. Algorithmic 16 Terror and the Wealth of Planets An Interview with El Iblis Shah by Konrad Becker World-Information.net

onrad Becker of World-Information.net meets Wealth distribution in the United States by Kwith the elusive author of “Cannibalistic Capi- net worth (2007).The net wealth of many talism and Alien Algorithms” to discuss algorithmic people is negative because of debt. regimes and the politics of code and machines. El Iblis Shah’s research on control and deception technologies focuses on encoding belief in symbolic repre- How time compressed is the postbiological intelligence substrate likely to be, relative to hu- sentations and human sacrifice. On his way from the man culture? Consider the 10 millionfold difference between the speed of biological thought Middle-east’s fertile crescent to the “Conference on (roughly 150 km/hr chemical diffusion in and between neurons) and the speed of electronic Classification and Violence” in Athens, the secretive “thought” (speed-of-light electron flow). (…) To self-aware postbiological systems, the dy- wizard of dissent comments on infectious powers of namics of human thought and culture may be so slow and static by comparison that we will alien formulas, the rise of a new cult and its rule of appear as immobilized in space and time as the plant world appears to the human psyche. terror. (Cosmos & culture. Cultural evolution in a Cosmic Context, Ed. by Steven J. Dick and Mark L. Lupisella, NASA, 2009) Konrad Becker The new decision sciences conflu- ent with rational choice theory and the algorithmic prediction industry have an impact comparable to KB So the vision is that this science reveals objective a deep contempt of democratic processes collude Nostradamus - not just in the context of managing universal law, based on reason, which is not relative towards models of a “rationally” managed soci- capital but all human affairs. You trace this cult of to cultural milieu, and grounded in an inviolable su- ety. After the implementation of decision making scrying the future to the Science of War and Mutual- periority of unique individual preferences? systems in military and government a proof of the ly Assured Destruction? EIS Western milieus invested in regimes of ratio- soundness of its practices became difficult and im- El Iblis Shah Alongside the construction of trans- nality are characterized by a wild confusion on the practical. However, in this crusade there is no need continental missiles and the nuclear standoff be- meaning of reason. But models of game theory, for explanations since its logic is understood to be tween the US and the USSR, the Sputnik shock and decision theory, artificial intelligence and military beyond the grasp of the common people and elec- militarization of outer space, concepts like game strategy, replace judgments of reason with algo- torates. Based on an objective science representing theory promised solid tools for tactical and strate- rithmic rules of rationality. By the early 1950s, re- the absolute truth of given universal laws, there is gic decisions. From an Air Force expanded warfare ducing intelligence, decision-making, strategic plan- no necessity for proof and human objections be- program, RAND developed its then unique product ning and reasoning to algorithmic rules spread to come obsolete. Grinding bodies and minds, cascad- of “System Analysis” to impress military elites with psychology, economics, political theory, sociology, ing capitalist data processes serve alien appetites illusions of objectivity. At the dawn of the cyber- and philosophy. for blood sacrifice. netic control revolution, new decision technologies established a regime of knowledge production, KB Is this a just a religious rendering of classical eco- KB How did a cannibalistic cult of capitalism be- channeling democratic decision making towards a nomic theory on steroids? Is it a technocratic update come the dominant belief system and western society specific agenda. By mapping perception through on Adam Smith and political theories of self-interest trapped into a regime of cyphers? the lenses of their systems, Cold War rationality that became part of western civilizations since the EIS When alien automatons reconstruct the planet creates worlds and social theories turn into social Renaissance and the Enlightenment? as a cosmic trap and by definition you don’t see facts. RAND, the first US think-tank, became a EIS Rational choice methodology emerged from the it. When humans reach out, synchronizing personal breeding ground for a self-replicating cult at the paranoid Cold War milieu of engineering, behav- cascades of meaning with collective illusions, it cre- center of American Cold War efforts. Think-tanks ioral sciences and social control more than economic ates inroads for viral attacks on individuals. Charms use epistemological leverage to muscle into the cen- theory. It is a turn away from human sentiments and of Arab numbers and Vedic zeros from the east tral processes of control. sympathy towards formulas where deeply authori- invaded human hosts, the infosphere of the planet tarian worldviews are veiled behind the rhetoric of cracked open for their blind and vengeful signs. KB Decision tools for warfare from a science of mil- natural liberties. The concept of a rational citizen is Accountants trained to think in non-human fashion itary strategy were transferred to the domestic front established by a set-theoretic definition, a grid of turned into hexed double bookkeepers for invisi- and the hands of policy makers. These ideas spread pairwise comparisons excluding social utility. Politi- ble forces beyond reason; compartmentalized bu- from cybernetic ballistics and military management cal decisions and accountability are not in the equa- reaucrats converted into slaves of alien logic. In The Laboratory Planet n° 5 science to an overarching ideology of internalized tions, a public arena of orientation towards social these cults there is no causation but big data cor- control? good for the benefit of all is rendered nonsensical relations and judgement is the product of machines. EIS War sciences in the RAND Corporation stimu- by an impossibility theorem. Anti-human formulas of From strange scripts with a life of their own, evil lated research on social control devices. Practices mutually assured destruction implemented for so- spells raise forces of destruction that render Earth a in the military-industrial-academic complex spread cial welfare replace deliberation on the wellbeing charred altar for alien idiot gods. to civilian public policy. From the Pentagon and the of all with economic mechanisms to favor sociopath management of wars to the parliaments and World individual wealth. A bipolar Cold War turned into KB Confined to intellectual swamps infested by these Bank, decision technologies invaded the halls of today’s rhizoid code wars - to control the planet’s cults, humanity seems to have become subject to eter- power. Calls for a rationalization of society and biomass and its species. In its theater of classifica- nally dissatisfied and irresponsible gods. What are its control by reason are always closely linked with tion, elements defined as rational are set under the the chances for escape? social engineering and Cold War elites saw man- guidance of a mythical invisible hand. Unsurprising- EIS Data centers, high voltage shrines for evil agement as gateway to fundamental political and ly this hand did not invest into technologies for the eyes and the malevolent machinery of algorithmic alien capitalism economic change. In defining the conditions to which people but in devices for controlling and exploiting prayer mills are networked cathedrals of necrop- rational agency must conform, rational choice is humans as caloric engines. Individual self- interest olitical terraforming. Shrouded in “rational logic” normative prescriptive and descriptive in all forms came to be the way to design hominoid robots - just from the ivory hills of madness, tin god tentacles of of decisions. Behavior is only considered rational define the self and then calculate the interest. selfish genes drive cults of craved panic expanding as long as it does not deviate from an imposed into space. In this unholy war, prefabbed consum- internalized logic towards selfish ends. Self-interest KB In this transfer of decision making to machines ers chase the dragon of vaporous desires in the in this defined grid of choice is presented as alter- running on an alien agenda, when was human interest name of self-interest. Escaping the prisoners’ dilem- native to the rule of shady and authoritarian elites. subtracted from the formula? ma, free spirits paint a different map navigating in The methodology eliminates politics from decision EIS Contrary to some beliefs market sovereignty the ocean of the unpredictable. Under the cover of making with the claim to objective science. Instead is not complementary to liberal democracy - it re- darkness, covenants of human and machine strike of tedious negotiating processes automated systems places politics. Regardless of its implicit demands against the colonization of the future. Beware the of control with authority anchored in the scientific to enforce “a suitable framework for the beneficial return of the invisible repressed, breaking the spells rigor of its objective calculations seemed attractive. working of competition” it is an alternative to a of possession to change the rules and play a dif- politics of shared interests. Technocratic elites with ferent game. The Laboratory Planet n° 5 alien capitalism 17 I by Pablo deSoto,architect of theheavens“ the technology “acquiring onearth Laboratory Fukushima case thatthetickingofitstimerisgrowinglouder those wehavefacedbefore.Andnowisn’titthe danger it presents...is of akind completely unlike moment ofdestruction,likeatickingtimebomb.The Nuclear civilizationalwaysharborsinitswomba bination and dissolution ofchemical substances.... cals...and itscyclestakeplaceasprocessesofcom- including life,iscomposedmostbasicallyofchemi- on earth. Our world on the surface of this planet, is analienintruderdisruptingtheprinciplesoflife a threatagainstwhichtheypossessnodefense;it deep significance.Forallformsoflife,radiationis world hereontheearth’ssurface,is...amatterof ly bodiesandcompletelyunknowntothenatural phenomenon occurringnaturallyonlyinheaven- deployment hereonearthofnuclearreactions,a ing onearththetechnologyofheavens.…The “Nuclear technologyistheequivalentofacquir- pointed outaftertheChernobylaccidentin1986: gi Jinzaburo(Citizens’NuclearInformationCenter) he wasstruckbytheprescienceofsomethingTaka- into the Earth’s Biosphere” where he describes how ter inFukushima:ATwo-HeadedDragonDescends wrote “UnderstandingtheOngoingNuclearDisas- nuclear economy,spaceandintelligencestrategy) to MuseumforWorldPeaceandspecialistonthe T the prophecyofregeneration Nausicaä and But despite an initial feeling of strangeness, its Fire” isquitedifferentfrom thatofourworld. appeared onEarthafter the “SevenDaysof In Nausicaä,theanimal and plantlifethat tion bylivingorganisms. this areaandtherewasanastonishingadapta- was halted in the 1960s, fishing was banned in of theJapanesearchipelago.Whenpollution mercury, intotheBayofKyushuinsouthwest chemical plantdumpedheavymetals,including from 1932andforoverthirtyyearsthispetro- its newlifeformswasthedisasterofMinamata: Miyazaki’s inspirationfortheFukaïforestand organic resources. an “old”lifestyle,moremodest,relyingonlyon now theinhabitantsofNausicaä’svillagelive Industrial advancesledtodestructionandso anese, 王虫Omumeans“insectgod”). giant insectsdevelopsaroundtheOmus(inJap- this pollutedland,inwhichanewecosystemof survives. Atoxicforest,theFukaï,developson Days ofFire”.Onlyasmallparthumanity and itscivilizationsduringtheso-called“Seven trol oftheircreatorsanddevastatetheplanet ganic, half-robotic.Thesegiantsescapethecon- to thedevelopmentoftitanicwarriors,half-or- and excessivetechnologicaladvanceshaveled before theeventsoffilm.Industrialization yazaki, 1984)takesplaceathousandyears Fujioka (professorofEconomics,directorKyo- n themidstofFukushimanuclearcrisisAtsushi caä oftheValleyWind(HayaoMi- he backstoryoftheJapaneseanimeNausi- for the coexistence with humans. She then makes sicaä appreciatesitasisandseekssolutions to discoveritsoriginsandhowitfunctions.Nau- ones studyingtheecosystemofFukaï,trying Nausicaä and her mentor Yupa are the only accepted, wefindlightandlifeeverywhere. cinogenic strangenessofcolorsandshapesare ancient world.YetintheFukaï,oncehallu- highly toxicandharmfultothelifeformsof by insectsandthewind.Everythingthatlivesis lably and endemically through spores carried a singlelivingbeingthatreproducesuncontrol- This “seaofcorruption”canbeconsideredas that havenoexistingterrestrialequivalents. of giantmushrooms,bizarrejelliesandplants viewer animpressionofreality.TheFukaïisfull detailed descriptionandconsistencygivethe ago nuclearreactors.OccupyKasumigaseki,the gles continueagainst the re-start of thearchipiel- the pro-nucleargovernmentpolicy.Situatedstrug- on theroofofAbe’sofficialresidencetodenounce the beachesofFukushimamysteriouslyappeared In April2015,adronewithradioactivesandfrom botics. innovation centerfor“specializedindisasters”ro- sector; whilepromotingFukushimaPrefectureasan dom presstopublishcriticalinformationaboutthe Abe justpassedSecrecyLawthatthreatensfree- Abe, thecurrentmilitaristPrimeMinisterofJapan. cation problemratherthanpublichealth;andSinto to portraitthenuclearcatastropheasacommuni- (International AtomicEnergyAgency),whichtend TEPCO, theoperatorofFukushimaDaichii;IAEA rance orfalseknowledge.Infrontofthemare sue theirinterestsbycultivatingthedoubt,igno- networks andorganizationsthatintentionallypur- This anti-epistemologyisproducedbyestablished then explainswhytheseaccountsaremisleading. the credibilityofwidernuclearindustry;andit Downer outlineshowaccountsofthedisastershield that nuclearaccidentsare‘tolerable’.Ineachcase, (1) thatnuclearmeltdownswillnotoccur;and(2) core mantrasofpost-Fukushimanucleardiscourse: institutional invisibility of nuclear disaster “ the two in hispaper“IntheshadowofTomioka.On is ‘safe’,yetithasfailedtodoso.Heexplores long-standing expertassertionsthatnuclearpower 2011 meltdowns at Fukushima might have falsified School ofEconomicsandPoliticalScience,the Analysis of Risk and Regulation at the London As statedbyJohnDownerfromtheCentrefor meters fromtheplanet’smostpopulousurbanarea. the Ocean,rivers,fieldsandforests,just200kilo- of radio-isotopestothebiosphere,contaminating Fukushima Daichi1,emittingaestimated260tons lestial fireburnedinfourofthereactorsat Akira Kurosawainhis1990filmDreams,thece- The tickingwasnotheard,andasanticipatedby and louderinourears?“ ment-center-opens-with-prime-minister-attending/ www.jaif.or.jp/en/jaeas-naraha-remote-technology-develop- opment CenterOpenswithPrimeMinisterAttendinghttp:// ATOMS INJAPAN.JAEA’sNarahaRemoteTechnologyDevel- Centre forAnalysisofRiskandRegulation,p.pp1–33,2014. al invisibilityofnucleardisaster.LondonSchoolEconomics: DOWNER, J.‘IntheshadowofTomioka:Oninstitution- Biosphere. TheAsia-PacificJournal,v.9,n.37,2011. Fukushima: A “Two-Headed Dragon” Descends into the Earth’s FUKIOKA, A.UnderstandingtheOngoingNuclearDisasterin References: End theNuclearCapitalism! many post-Fukushimamarches:ReclaimOurLife! drumming inthestreetsofShunjukuone the reproductivecommons.Asstatedbyawoman ize ornotthenuclearcatastrophe. A struggle for laboratory where humans will naturalize/normal- One ofthemeaningsFukushimaisbeingtoday’s against thealienintrudes,followingTakagi’swords. er Plantblockadearelegitimateself-defenseacts of theParliamentJapan,OiNuclearPow- Hyndrangea revolution,theFridayprotestsinfront their errors. for athousandyears,hasbeencleaningup derstanding thatitisreallynatureitselfwhich, appears to be a poisonous forest without un- really is.Mankindthenseekstodestroywhat time ofthefilmdonotknowwhatFukaï pollution, whichiswhytheirdescendantsatthe not communicatetheoriginandintensityof Arrogant andprobablyashamed,humansdid tion ofnatureinthisprojectdecontamination. species ledbytheOmussymbolizesprotec- himself issolelyresponsible.Thebirthofnew ter, generatesthetoxicemissionsforwhichman required forthepurificationofsoilandwa- turn themintosand.Thisnecessarysynthesis, the “SevenDaysofFire”,crystallizethemand sorb thepoisonsdepositedbypollutionof a discoveryaboutthetoxicemissions:treesab- Bad Dreams,Ayesta &Bression,2013 What then is the unhuman? It is, first of all, a limit effacing all horizon lines in a miasmatic, black blur, 18 Black infinity without reserve, something that one is always arriv- Daloway’s own individuation slips away and is en- ing at, but which is never circumscribed within the gulfed, and at this moment he realizes that the hu- ambit of human thought. In Leiber’s story, we see man categories of life, mind, and technics are them- or, Oil Discovers at least four stages by which one encounters the selves simply one manifestation of the unhuman. In unhuman: other words, as opposed to the anthropic inversion (human don’t use oil, oil uses humans), here Daloway Humans At the first level, we encounter the unhuman only as experiences another kind of inversion, an ontogenic it exists for the human. This is the normative world of inversion in which everything human is revealed to by Eugene Thacker philosopher modern industrial capitalism described by Daloway be one instance of the unhuman. The ontogenic in- in the story. At this level, the unhuman is everything version is both ontological and ontogenetic, at once n 1964, the horror and fantasy author Fritz that is for us and for our benefit as human beings, the evisceration of thought from the human, as well ILeiber published a short story entitled “Black living in human cultures, and bearing some unilat- as an epiphany about the essentially unhuman qual- Gondolier,” which appeared in the Arkham House eral and instrumental relation to the world around ities of the human. In the ontogenic inversion, the anthology Over the Edge, and was subsequently us. This relation between human and unhuman relies human is only one instance of the unhuman. reprinted in the Ace Double volume Night Mon- upon an anthropic subversion. The unhuman is only At this point thought falters, and here we enter a sters. In this story, an unnamed narrator tells of the that which exists within the scope of the human; in a fourth stage that we can call misanthropic subtrac- mysterious disappearance of his friend Daloway, sense, there is no outside of the human, in so far as tion. At this point, thought falters, and language can a recluse and autodidact living nearby oil fields in the unhuman is always fully encompassed by human only continue by way of an apophatic use of neg- southern California. Daloway, it seems, began to knowledge and technics. At this level, the unhuman ative terms (“nameless,” “formless,” “lifeless”), which develop a bizarre and unnatural fascination with is everything that is subject to and produced by are themselves doomed to failure. This failure is oil – not just as a natural resource, and not just as human knowledge. At this level, anthropocentrism leveraged with great effect in the literary tradition something of geopolitical value, but with oil in itself overlaps almost perfectly with anthropomorphism. of supernatural horror and weird fiction. Authors as an ancient and enigmatic manifestation of the But Leiber’s story steadily moves towards a sec- such as Algernon Blackwood, William Hope Hodg- hidden world. Over time Daloway’s conversations ond level, which explores a notion of the unhuman son, and of course H.P. Lovecraft excel at driving with the narrator begin to take on the form of mys- through an inversion of the relation between human language to this breaking point. Here one notices tical visions, described by Daloway as a kind of and unhuman. The key phrase in Leiber’s story is the two strategies that are often used, often in concert gothic, funereal ooze: following: “man hadn’t discovered oil, but . . . oil with each other. There is a strategy of minimalism, had found man.” We don’t use oil, oil uses us. Note in which language is stripped of all its attributes, . . . that black and nefarious essence of all life that a relation of unilateralism still exists, except leaving only skeletal phrases such as “the nameless that had ever been, constituting in fact a great that it has been reversed. Instead of human beings thing,” “the shapeless thing,” or “the unnamable” deep-digged black graveyard of the ultimate el- making use of the planet for their own ends, the (which is also the title of a Lovecraft story). There is dritch past with blackest ghosts, oil had waited for planet is revealed to be making use of human be- also a strategy of hyperbole, in which the unknow- hundreds of millions of years, dreaming its black ings for its own ends. Humans are simply a way for ability of the unhuman is expressed through a litany dreams, sluggishly pulsing beneath Earth’s stony the planet to produce and reproduce itself. Clearly, of baroque descriptors, all of which ultimately fail skin, quivering in lightless pools roofed with marsh with this sort of epiphany all bets are off – one can to inscribe the unhuman within human thought and gas and in top-filled rocky tanks and coursing no longer regard the human endeavors of science, language. Some examples from Lovecraft follow: through a myriad channels . . . (1) technology, and economy in quite the same way. But the terms of this relation are still “human” – inten- . . . the rayless gloom with Miltonic legions of The image of oil as stealthily waiting gives the tionality, instrumental rationality, and even a touch the misshapen damned . . . ooze the vague quality of intelligence and intent – of malice are attributed to the anonymous ooze of . . . the nameless bands of abhorrent elder- and, more specifically, of malefic intent. In Leiber’s oil. It is as if the unhuman can only be understood world hierophants . . . hyperbolic prose, oil is not the type of ooze that we through the lens of the human. We can call this the . . . brooding, half-material, alien Things that see in Cold War monster movies, where the ooze anthropic inversion. The anthropic inversion allows festered in earth’s nether abysses . . . remains hidden beneath the surface of the Earth. for a concept of the unhuman to emerge, but it is . . . a pandeamoniae vortex of loathsome sound Instead, in “Black Gondolier” oil is described as ultimately recuperated within the ambit of human and utter, materially tangible blackness . . . an animate, creeping ooze that already is on the categories, such as intelligence and intentionality. Often these two strategies – minimalism and hyper- surface, and that immanently courses through all the Towards the end of Leiber’s story, this anthropic bole – dovetail into a singular epiphany concerning channels of modern industrial civilization, from the inversion undergoes another turn, leading to a third the faltering not just of language, but of thought as central pipelines feeding major cities, to the indi- level where the unhuman is encountered. As Da- well. At the end of Lovecraft’s story “The Unnam- vidual homes and cars that populate those cities. At loway is weirdly carried off into the viscous night able,” one of the characters, speaking to his friend one point in the story, the narrator attempts to put where oil and nocturnal darkness merge into one, Carter from a hospital bed, attempts to describe his Daloway’s rather crackpot theories into coherent form: Daloway’s theory, based on his wide readings in world history, geology, and the occult, was that crude oil – petroleum – was more than figuratively the life-blood of industry and the modern world and modern lightening-war, that it truly had a dim life and will of its own, an inorganic consciousness or sub-consciousness, The Laboratory Planet n° 5 that we were all its puppets or creatures, and that its chemical mind had guided and even enforced the development of modern technological civilization . . . (2)

“In brief,” the narrator concludes, “Daloway’s theory was that man hadn’t discovered oil, but that oil had found man.”(3) At the center of Leiber’s story is an inversion that takes place between human beings and an enigmatic, something else that constitutes a horizon for human thought. Let us call this “something else” the unhuman. The unhuman is not simply that which is alien capitalism not human, be it animals, machines, oceans, or cities, though all of these play a role in Leiber’s story. The unhuman is also not that which is made human, in which we would have featherless, bipedal walking and talking lumps of oil – though even this is hinted The Baku Ateshgah was a pilgrimage and philosophical centers of fire worshipers from Northwestern at in Leiber’s story as well. The unhuman is distinct Indian Subcontinent, who were involved in trade with the Caspian area. The Fire Temple of Baku on from these two ways of thinking – anthropocentrism the northern edge of town, a castle-like temple and monastery complex known locally as the Ateshgah and anthropomorphism, respectively. or Ateshgyakh. It was a Hindu temple. The complex was built on a pocket of natural gas that once produced a flame from natural gas seepage. The local Tat name of the raion is said to related to “the Persian words ‘Surakh’ (hole) or Surkh/ Sorkh (red) and ‘khani’ (source or fountain). According to (1) – Fritz Leiber, “Black Gondolier,” in Night Mon- historical sources, before the construction of the Indian Temple Of Fire (Atashgah) in Surakhani at sters (New York: Ace, 1969), p. 14. the end of the 18th [century], the local people also worshipped at this site because of the ‘seven holes (2) - Ibid.. with burning flame’. (3) - Ibid., p. 15. (image : Ateshgah Indians Devoted to the Cult of Fire Baku by Grigori Gagarin) strange experience in the following way: 19 “No – it wasn’t that way at all. It was everywhere – a gelatin – a slime – yet it had shapes, a thousand shapes of horror beyond all memory. There were eyes – and a blemish. It was the pit – the mael- strom – the ultimate abomination. Carter, it was the unnamable!”(4) Taken together, these four stages of the unhuman result in a paradoxical revelation, in which one thinks the thought of the limit of all thought. At the level of the anthropic subversion – the first stage – this limit is present but hidden, occulted, and it remains unrecognized. At the level of the anthropic inversion – the second stage – this limit is brought into the foreground through a reversal of the terms, but not of the relation. But here the unhuman still remains hidden, something only known at best indirectly, through the ad-hoc use of human terms (such as sentience or intentionality or malice). Proceeding from this, at the third level the ontogen- The Ateshgah temple ceased to be a place of worship after 1883 with the installation of petroleum ic inversion produces a misanthropic realization, a plants at Surakhany. Petrochemical industry became endemic in the Abşeron Peninsula in Soviet Era. realization that the unhuman exists antagonistically with respect to the human. This leads to the fourth but an enigmatic revelation of the unthinkable, or limit, becomes identical with a kind of apophatic stage, the misanthropic subtraction, in which the re- really, what we might call a black illumination. Black indifference towards the human – at the same time lation itself is reversed. Here the unhuman is not illumination leads from the human to the unhuman, that this indifferent unhuman is immanently “within” even known indirectly – and yet it is still intuited, but it is also already the unhuman, or one instance the human as well. It is for this reason that the ex- still thought, but only via a thought that has been of the unhuman. Black illumination does not lead to amples of black illumination in supernatural horror stripped of all its attributes. What is thought is only the affirmation of the human within the unhuman, indelibly bear the mark of a generalized misan- this absolute inaccessibility, this absolute incommen- but instead opens onto the indifference of the unhu- thropy, that moment when philosophy and horror surability; what is affirmed is only that which is man (Lovecraft, in his letters, refers to his own posi- negate themselves, and in the process become one itself negation. tion as “indifferentism.”) The unhuman does not exist and the same. for us (the humanisim of the unhuman), and neither What results, then, is strange kind of epiphany, a (4) - H.P. Lovecraft, “The Unnamable,” in The is it against us (the misanthropy of the unhuman). realization that is, at its core, profoundly antihu- Dreams in the Witch-House and Other Stories, ed. Black illumination leads to the enigmatic thought of manistic. It is not just a realization about human S.T. Joshi (Penguin, 2004), p. 89. knowledge and its relative horizon of the thinkable, the immanence of indifference. The unhuman, at its

THE HYPOTHESIS OF THE TWO ANTHROPOS by ewen chardronnet ets start from the idea that the Flood can be manding him to construct an ark in order to take by Adam, included in the Nag Hammadi Codex), Lseen as the founding myth of the Holocene. It with him specimens of all living beings. Having seems to indicate the division of the Anthropos in is actually possible that the myths of the Flood carried out the mission successfully, God rewards two distinct and parallel incarnations, two cre- could stem from the great melting that occured Atrahasis with the gift of immortality, but also ations, two streams of the physical expression at the end of the Pleistocene, tales born of a dis- makes sure that humans disturb his peace less of humanity, the mortal form and the immortal tant memory of the end of the last great glacial by reducing their lifespan, introducing sickness, double. alien capitalism period (the Würm glaciation or Würmzeit) about sterility and so on. 8000 years BC when the interglacial age of the Holocene began. We can also note that, if (the Contemporary transhumanism can beginning and) the end of a glacial period is thus be seen as a myth of victory certainly a transition (from a glacial period to over the Holocene by a “good An- an interglacial period) defined by the albedo thropocene”, the return to the pre- of the Earth – the amount of solar energy re- Flood state of semi-gods, a victory flected by the Earth’s surface, in relation to the that reconquers the long lifespan total solar energy, parameter which results from of the pre-Flood patriarchs, or, the amount of the Earth’s surface covered in ice even better, the gift of immortality – and that it is certainly a catastrophic phenom- accorded to Atrahasis. enon, lasting a relatively short time as recent The Laboratory Planet n° 5 models seems to suggest, the last glaciation could In the same way the catastroph- have been, during several centuries or even just ism of the apostles of the “bad a few decades, a period of diluvian downpours Anthropocene” can be seen as a accompanied by gigantic floods in many regions quest for becoming perfect like of the world. Noah, saviour of the simple and pure non-human souls, as devel- The myth of the Flood can thus be seen from oped in the Sethian Gnostic myth – three angles : from Seth, third son of Adam, the global warming and its catastrophic consequenc- only pure one after Cain’s murder es; the extinction of species and the divine mis- of Abel. Noah is a descendant of sion to save non-humans; the reduction of lifes- Seth (seed of Seth), in charge of pans, immortality for a few chosen ones. the divine mission of saving the Concerning this last point, the Bible states that, non-humans from the Flood caused before the Flood, the patriarchs lived for a thou- by the Demiurge, son of the Aeon sand years. Noah was the last patriarch to live Sophia-Gaïa and creator of mat- so long, after the Flood God reduced the lifes- ter, and getting rid of Cain’s de- pan of humans. But the Flood is not a Semitic scendants, fruit of the sullying of myth, it is Sumerian. The myth of Noah (500 BC) Eve by the Demiurge (the bad is inspired by the myth of Atrahasis as told in the humans of the Pleistocene?). The Epic of Atrahasis (1700 BC) which also inspired Demiurge tried to destroy Seth’s the character of Ziusudra (1200 BC), the last of seed by causing the Flood, but in the kings before the Flood (Ziusudra means “long vain: Seth’s descendants are by life” in Sumerian), and that of Uta-Napishtim in essence physei sozomenoi, saved Source : L. Caruana, the Gilgamesh Epic (1200 BC). In this myth, Atra- by their very nature. The Hidden Passion, hasis (or Ziusudra or Uta-Napishtim, depending The Gnostic equivalent of the Fall, 2007 on the versions) receives a message in a dream as described in the Apocalypse of telling him about the coming Flood and com- Adam (a prophecy given to Seth Xenobiochemistry xenoeconomy exotropic exotics Xenecology xenophobes misoxenes exorcist 20 Writing alien abominates the hate the foreigners exopolitics (non-terragen) foreigners xenophones exoplanet exogamy ecologies xenoctones xenophiles exo- Xenobiota kill xenophages landscape Xenobiotic the foreigners eat the foreigners extra- extraterrestrial xenofeminism xénoressources latin : extra, out of xenobiology xeno- altersex xénocommunication on detecting schizogamy alter- schizo- latin : other schizophrenic allogeneic schismatic heteropathy background Word allomorph disappear disfigure dis- intersex heteronomy allo- distinction inter- hetero- grec : other dissimilar endogenous grec : other ambidextrous VIRUS radiation allotropic mono- endo- heterocratie ambisexual an- (latin : endo, inside) hétérotopie (1) endosymbiosis ambi- heterogeneous auto-poieitic ambivalent in Antarctica synvolution autogenous terratope sym-chthonic auto- r sym-poieitic autotroph tera- ter abiology homo- autotomy teratogenic ectopia sympathy homosex autonomous byAlejandra Pérez Núñez artist ectoplasm syn- automaton apo- http://elpueblodechina.org ecto- synthesis (grec : ecto, simili- apogamic n 2009 I began an investigation into the Antarctic outside) (latin : similis transmutable (similar) Iterritories. I was recording unperceivable sounds transgender through the use of transducers. While I was staying trans- coexistence alienigenate translucent co- equidistance alien- at Base Prat in Greenwich Island I thought of the equ- alienation accumulated discourses, of the intensities related équity to scientific investigations and geopolitical treaties équivalence un- mapped over a place with such unusual configura- autotroph uncongenial tions as Antarctica. ultra- A concept of a system of coordinates can be read far beyond abstract in The Ticket That Exploded, a work by William meta- ab- far beyond S. Burroughs (1967) with contributions from Bri- (Latin prefix ab- indicats on Gysin, Michael Portman and Ian Somerville. The metabolism distance, separation or metaplasm completion) book was developed mainly out of the permuta- metalaw tions and juxtapositions executed over a pool of duced subject-object distinctions. These systems of neous multidimensional”, in relation to the explo- written material (2). coordinates are networks that contain angles, and ration of systems of coordinates in the juxtaposed Nova criminals are described in The Ticket That Ex- degrees of deviation or separation, so that, from text, as this serves as an interface with which to exploded as non tridimensional organisms active as degree 0 in perception, meaning the total fascina- plore landscape, since it is executed to become an systems of coordinates that unfold throughout the tion and loss of boundaries, to those angles within index of site. The exploration takes place through “addicts of the world” and other confluences. (3) the systems of coordinates that spread over into the a completion of degrees. “tissues of predilection.” (4) Degrees of separation between the subject and the The basic Nova technique is very simple: AL- 0 degrees of total immersion is the instantaneous object, the writer and the writing, landscape and ways create as many insoluble conflicts as possi- multidimensional. Word pushes us away from de- the self, the self and “The Other Half”. ble and always aggravate existing conflict – gree 0. That degree 0 is the fully libidinal place Burroughs, in The Ticket that Exploded, asks, “You This is done by dumping in the same planet life of fulfilment. know about the logos group?? and describes them forms with incompatible conditions of existence. Burroughs asserts that the same infectious organ- as discharging “engram tapes” for domination (8) W.S.Burroughs (1962) The Ticket That Explod- ism, the “word virus”, is a key to having access to Alien secret groups and bureaus clear and dis- ed, p.55 Operation Rewrite (5), since, because everything is charge strains of viral infectious words, with se- pre-written (6) and pre-recorded, (7) it is possible quences to control human affect. (9) I propose that there are forms in the text, such to access the pre-recordings. The process of “word virus” infestation can be com- as systems of coordinates emergent in the cut-ups, I now will introduce the concept of the “instanta- pared to a process of indoctrination such as the juxtaposed and permutated text, that evidence re- promotion of an ideology. méta- Fredric Jameson (1981) points out that Althusser’s concept of ideology is “a rep- The ethos of survival or vitalism is necrocracy. resentational structure which allows the in- NECROCRACY, Reza Negarestani For the sorcerous crowd of the pre-Aryan lran dividual subject to conceive or imagine his ultra- n Defacing the Ancient Persia, Hamid Parsani plateau, survival was not supposed to hold or her lived relationship to transpersonal Idiscusses how, before the Aryans settled in what death back as long as possible but to feed the realities such as the social structure or “the would later be called the Iran plateau, the land (Un)life. For them, survival and the scrabbling collective logic of history”. (10) was not empty; it was occupied by mysterious peo- will to survive were sorcerous rituals to feed the The infestation of the “word virus” de- ple with outlandishly complex beliefs, who knew Outside, to feed what is external to ‘so-called scribed by Burroughs may be seen as nothing but demons, Daivas and Druj (also Druga : life as live-ing’, an occult practice for feeding a simile for the operations of scripture The Laboratory Planet n° 5 the Mother of Abominations). These pre-Aryan sor- the avatars of the Outside. Living was itself a performed in late antiquity in relation to cerous people regarded everything as an avatar feeding project, and survival in general was a the Old and New Testament that Fredric of horror, of a radical Outside; even the fertilizing strategy, the most pragmatic polytics for engag- Jameson uses as a proof of a large proj- forces of nature such as wind, rain, thunder, soil ing the Outside. They believed that survival fed ect of indoctrination, in the medieval and and growth were Daivas (demons). Lige was Druj an unthinkable Abomination, an ultimate outsid- patristic system known as the four levels of itself, the Mother of Abominations, the radical Out- er which their Zoroastrian descendants called scripture, which was used, “as a strategy side. The entire universe was saturated with horror. Druj. The longer you endure, the more you feed for assimilating the Old Testament to the (…) Generally, we believe that life makes survival the Outside (interlocking with the outside on the New (...)” (11) possible; but if life is the source of living then why plane of strategy). In the Avestan language of These operations of rewriting the Life of do we need to survive? If life is the so-called vital ancient Persia, Druj — from a Sanskrit origin Christ as a re-writing of the Old Testa- source, then why is the act of living as an appropri- — meant blackening, the chaotic aspects of ment seem, according to Jameson, to have ation and a survivalist regulation necessary? Why falsity, fraud and strategy. The idea of ritual been based on a system of categories. alien capitalism is survival possible, or do we need to survive if life as a communion with this openness, then, devel- Thus writing and re-writing might be seen is already a source of living? Once we realize that oped the pragmatics of a new survival system as a technology applied to scripture. the ethics of life is external to that of survival, and practically and religiously conscious of its own “It is precisely by way of the moral and that survival is a resistance to the epidemic and repression and the exteriority of life. (…) As anagogical interpretation (the collective overpowering presence of life, then we can say the ovum of monotheism, Zoroastrism became a “meaning” of history) that the textual that to be pro-life is to be essentially anti-survival. vehicle for the sabotaged Aryanism of the Iran apparatus is transformed into a libidinal (…) Survival presupposes death from the begin- plateau. Now it was the task of monotheism to apparatus”. (12) ning; so-called actual death is merely the eventua- disseminate the Outside-oriented experiments Once libidinal, contagion is widely spread tion of the real death, or the impossibility of surviv- and rituals of the sorcerous crowds. The mission as the need is established - A kind of al in affording the exteriority of life. The course of of monotheism was to fuse with planetary events “full spectrum dominance” (13) operates living or survival is where death not only becomes in order to systematically transform everything instantaneously from inner speech to the a terminus-event but a propulsive and conducting into a sacrificial meal for the Outside“ (Negar- Nova Police, with the police working power which starts to work even before one begins estani, cyclonopedia: complicity with anonymous through your inner speech. Burroughs re- to live (death becomes the director of one’s life). materials, p.210-213). lates domination to lines of pleasure and the “algebra of need”, a series of cycles related to scarcity, satisfaction, fear, withdrawal jingling comprised of many overlapping high-fre- 21 (1) - This text has been written as a snapshot of a larger essay. and waiting. (14) quency whistles. The Very Low Frequency emis- It is using concepts found in the books, Naked Lunch (1959), The Burroughs describes virus domination spreading sions involved in this universal interweaving. With Ticket That Exploded (1962), Nova Express (1964) and The through vibrating photos, flicker ghost, spliced re- the exception of sounds produced normally by nat- Third Mind (1978) by William S. Burroughs. cordings, engram tapes, juxtapositions, the other ural noises, they are called Very Low Frequency (2) - The Third Mind (1978) p.10-11 The ticket that exploded (1962) p.65 half, permutations, pattern pulsing, remote mineral emissions or VLF ionospheric noise. (...) (3) - op. cit. p.57 silence, writing machines. The sequences of relations, (4) - The Ticket That Exploded (1962) p.58-59 established by the method of the four senses, con- Sources of Very Low Frequency emissions (5) - op.cit p.49 vert the particular into the universal, daily life into Nature and influence of VLF emissions using unusu- (6) - Odier, Daniel. The Job: Interviews with William S. Bur- human universal history. It is an algorithm, it is soft- al society-community teams. The evidence is strong roughs. New York: Penguin, 1989. p.28 (7) - Everything is done with tape recorders” The Ticket That ware performed over words that have since then that VLFenomenology emissions in electro magnet- Exploded (1962) p.166 been repeated over the centuries. Those words, the ic space are complex political geo messages re- (8) - The Ticket That Exploded (1962) p.20 scriptures, transported a logic, a virus, as Burroughs maining with no explanation. Various theories have (9) - As described in detail in Nova Express (1964) and The named it, an infectious logic of ideology. They are brought up the presence of charged particles in the Ticket That Exploded (1962) (10) - Jameson, F (1981) “The Political Unconscious: Narrative streams of words that, for Burroughs, correspond outer ionosphere. as a Socially Symbolic Act. p.30 to a form of alien invasion, or a “biological mu- Guided missiles, flee with amphibious submarines. (11) - Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious (1981).p.29 tation”. The nature of these alien invaders is poly- North American Rockwell World War and the dis- (12) - Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious (1981).p.30 morphous, sometimes “alien”, sometimes undercover covery of the magnetosphere was present during (13) - A concept coined by the Pentagon (2000) and brought police agents, an “inflexible machine”, a mixture of testing and in the way the sky lit up at night. (...) into academic discourse by Steve Goodman in Sonic Warfare (2010) radioactive vapor bureau officers. (15) Report in itself : the Garrett Corporation has de- (14) - “Junk yields a basic formula of evil virus: The algebra of Nagasaki - Injury Headquarters - Dual mammalian signed the motors - They bounce between the earth need”. The Naked Lunch (2004) p.4 structure - Hiroshima People - Or some disgusting and the ionosphere and occasionally they take a (15) - According to Burroughs the origin and history of this officers produced the rest of it. (Burroughs, W.S. ride in military planes; General electric has its own word virus was formulated by Steinplatz “the word was a virus of what he calls BIOLOGIC MUTATION effecting the biologic (1964) Nova Express. p.37) think transcender in order to reach the earth again change in its host which was then genetically conveyed.”Elec- The idea I propose is that text can be used to inter- in the opposite hemisphere. Hewlett-Packard com- tronic Revolution (1970) p.6. A further argumentation should face landscape, placing text against landscape or pany “radar control” Jet propulsion laboratory; Lit- consider the relation with Valis (1981) from Philip K Dick. Alien over it , becoming a mold of the real, being itself tletown Industries build arching over the equator, agents in Nova Express (1964) p.33. An inflexible machine in an index, a system of coordinates that parallels whistlers and globetrotting signals, signals of as- The Naked Lunch (2004) p.112 (16) - A common element (2014) is a radio work whose text the multidimensionality of each site. Text molds the sault ships and orientation and fire control systems, has been executed through the application of Burroughs’ writ- “instantaneous multidimensional” , redacting it into from the initial explosion of a bolt of lightning they ing techniques using as sources two articles by Douglas Kahn, a mold of a face, the traces left in topographies, unfold, forming a glissando. Earth Sound Earth Signal. Energies and Earth Magnitude in traces of history, and in the particular case of Ant- (...) Quasi-musical sounds with audible frequencies the Arts and The Military-Arts Nexus: Two cases in the United States, c. 1970. and Helliwell text on Whistlers and Related arctica, and many other remote unaccessible plac- like a faint jumble to World War, North American Ionospheric Phenomena. http://radio.museoreinasofia.es/ale- es, traces of empire. Rockwell at 1500 cycles per second. It is the prop- jandraperez I will take my work, A common element (2013) (15) erty of being directionally dependent or toisotropy as an example of such performative text and proof millions of U.S. dollars. It has been observed in pose it as a mimetic interface to the instantaneously the high performance intercosmos satellites called multitudinal in the Antarctic landscape. TEMP running guided missiles and advanced am- From time to time the murmur continued. The sound phibious submarines. also took the form of a continuous screeching or

AUGMENTED MACHINE INTELLIGENCE INTELLIGENCE

Machine learning Accelerationism COLLECTIVE GOOGLE BRAIN Xenofeminism Empathy Transhumanism Neuroenhancement Mirror neurons INTELLIGENCE KURZWEIL Ego tunnel GALLESE Siri (fembot) Cyberpositive METZINGER APPLE World encyclopedia LAND & PLANT Testojunkie Singularity WIKIPEDIA PageRank algorithm Extended mind Nonconscious cognition PRECIADO VINGE Cyberspace CLARK & CHALMERS GOOGLE Technogenesis Cambrian intelligence Web GIBSON BROOKS HAYLES TECHNOLOGICAL AXI Biology of machines BERNERS-LEE Hive mind KELLY Cyborg manifesto Hacker manifesto WARK “Stay hungry, stay foolish” HARAWAY Swarm intelligence World Library Rhizome Cyberproletariat WHOLE EARTH CATALOGUE DYER-WITHEFORD BENI & WANG CLARK The machinic Anti-psychiatry DELEUZE & GUATTARI Machinic multitude Computational universe Extension of consciouness Universal Turing Machine LAING Cognitive capitalism Cellular automata Global village Society of Mind NEGRI S MINSKY WOLFRAM MCLUHAN POLITICAL AXIS Cybernetic factory VIRNO Ecology of mind ALQUATI Artificial Intelligence Intelligence Social BATESON ______MCCARTHY Augmented Intellect Intelligence amplification cybernetics Brain of the Firm Bootstrapping Cybersyn Cellular automata Homeostasis PASK Collective intelligence The Soul at Work ENGELBART BEER BERARDI von NEUMANN ASHBY LEVY Memex Autopoiesis Cultural capital Cybernetic hypothesis Turing machine BUSH MATURANA BOURDIEU TIQQUN Turing test Intelletronics VARELA RAMO Grammatization Theological apparatus TURING Man-computer symbiosis Noosphere STIEGLER Algorithm LICKLIDER World Brain de CHARDIN AGAMBEN ______WELLS Z1 computer Technological apparatus ZUSE Brain cooperation Laws of imitation HEIDEGGER Adaptive and TARDE War cybernetics catastrophic brain Feedback loop GOLDSTEIN WIENER Umwelt Homeostasis Feedback loop Information CANNON von UEXKULL ______BERNARD

ADA LOVELACE Division of mental labour General Intellect Analytical engine Machine capital BABBAGE MARX

______Sign

Artificial Intelligence and Its Discontents EPISTEMIC STAGES nous poietikos The funnel of i. Matteo Pasquinelli, Assistant Professor ARISTOTLE The (political) evolution of machinic cognition Humanities and Media Studies, Pratt Institute Fall semester 2015-2016

Augmen ted intel li gence is an umbrel la-term used in media theory, cogni ti ve scien ces, neuro sci en ces, philo so phy of mind and poli ti cal philo so phy to cover the complex re Source: Matteo Pasquinelli (ed.) Alleys of Your Mind: Augmented Intelligence and lati on between human intel li gence, on one side, and mnemo-tech ni ques and compu ta Its Traumas. Lüneburg: Leuphana University / Meson Press, 2015. http://matteopas- tional machi nes, on the other, both unders tood as an expan sion (also to a soci al and poli ti cal degree) of human cogni ti ve faculties. The concep tu al field of menaug ted in quinelli.com/augmented-intelligence-traumas telligence can be illustrated along two main axes: a technological axis (that describes the degree of comple xi ty from tradi tio nal mnemo-tech ni ques to the most sophis ti ca ted knowledge machi nes) and a poli ti cal axis (that descri bed the scale of intel lec tu al aug menta ti on from the indi vi du al to a soci al dimen si on). Is There Any 22 World to Come? by Déborah Danowski & Eduardo Viveiros de Castro anthropologist

he problem of the end of the world is always Tformulated as a separation or divergence, a divorce or orphaning resulting from the disappearance of one pole in the duality of world and inhabitant—the beings whose world it is. In our metaphysical tradition, this being tends to be the “human,” whether called Homo sapiens or Dasein. The disappearance may be due to either physical Dogon drawing (after Marcel Griaule extinction or one pole’s absorption by the other, & Ogotommeli, Le renard pâle, 1951). which leads to a change in the persisting one. We Drawing of the Sirus system sketched could schematically present this as an opposition on the sand by Ogotommeli with: between a “world without us,” that is, a world after (A) Sirus, the end of the human species, and an “us without (B) Sirus B (with two positions), world,” a humanity bereft of world or environment, (C) Sirus C, a persistence of some form of humanity or subjec- (D) Nommo, tivity after the end of the world. (E) Yourougou, But to think the future disjunction of world and in- (F) the star of women, habitant inevitably evokes the origin of its present, (G) the sign of women, precarious conjunction. The end of the world proj- (H) the sex of women. ects backward a beginning of the world; the future fate of humankind transports us to its emergence. The existence of a world before us, although re- as the primal substance out of which many if not er to our own. The world as we know it, or rather garded as a philosophical challenge by some (if all of the categories of beings and things in the the world as the indigenous knew it, is the present Meillassoux’s subtle argument is to be believed universe arose, the Campa of today being the de- world that exists (or existed) in the interval between (1), seems easy enough for the average person to scendants of those ancestral Campa who escaped the time of origins and the end of times—the in- imagine. The possibility of an us before the world, being transformed. (7) tercalary time that we could call the “ethnograph- on the other hand, is less familiar to the West’s We could also mention the cosmogony of the Lu- ic present” or the present of ethnos, as opposed mythological repertoire. iseño from California, evoked in The Jealous Potter to the “historical present” of the nation-state. Our Yet it is a hypothesis explored in several Amerin- by Claude Lévi-Strauss, in which the cultural hero present world that exists is conceived in some Am- dian cosmogonies. It finds itself conveniently sum- Wyiot differentiates the originary human community erindian cosmologies as the epoch that began when marized in the commentary that opens a myth of into the various species of currently existing beings. pre-cosmological beings suspended their ceaseless the Yawanawa, a people of Pano-speakers from (8) The theme is also found in some non-Amerindian becoming-other (erratic metamorphoses, anatomic the western Amazon: “The myth’s action takes place cultures: for example, the Kaluli from Papua New plasticity, “unorganized” corporeality) in favor of in a time in which ‘nothing yet was, but people Guinea recount that “at that [pre-cosmological] greater ontological univocality. (12) already existed.’” (2) The variation of the Aike- time, according to the prevailing story, there were Putting an end to the “time of transformations”—a wara, a Tupian-speaking people who live at the no trees or animals or streams or sago or food. The common expression among Amazonian cultures— other end of the Amazon, adds a curious exception: Earth was covered entirely by people.” (9) A man those unstable anthropomorphs who lived at the “When the sky was still very close to the Earth, of authority (a big man) then decided to transform origins took on the forms and bodily dispositions there was nothing in the world except people—and the different groups of people into different spe- of those animals, plants, rivers, and mountains that tortoises!” cies and other natural phenomena: “those who were they would eventually come to be. This was, in At first, then, everything was originally human, or left aside became the ancestors of human beings.” fact, already prefigured in the names they bore rather, nothing was not human (except for tortoises, in the absolute past; thus, for example, the Pecca- of course, according to the Aikewara). A consid- We can see how, in Amerindian thought (and some ry Yanomami—the tribe of originary people who erable number of Amerindian myths—as well as others), humankind or personhood is both the seed had the name “Peccary” [queixada]—became the some from other ethnographic regions—imagine and the primordial ground, or background, of the term “peccary,” that is, the wild pigs that we hunt the existence of a primordial humankind, whether world. (10) Homo sapiens is not the character who and eat today (Yanomani means “people” in their fabricated by a demiurge or simply presupposed comes to crown the Great Chain of Being by add- language). The whole world (though again, per- as the only substance or matter out of which the ing a new ontological layer (spiritual or “cognitive,” haps not the tortoise or some other oddity) is vir- world could have come to be formed. in modern parlance) on top of a previously existing tually included in this originary proto-humankind; These are narratives about a time before the be- organic layer that would, in turn, have emerged the pre-cosmological situation might thus be indif-

ginning of time, an era or eon that we could call out of a substrate of “dead” matter. In the West’s ferently described as a still worldless humankind The Laboratory Planet n° 5 “pre-cosmological.” (4) These primordial people mythophilosophical tradition, we tend to conceive or as a world in human form, an anthropomorphic were not fully human in the sense that we are, since, animality and nature in general as referring es- multiverse that gives way to a world conceived as despite having the same mental faculties as us, they sentially to the past. Animals are living arche-fos- the result of the (never quite finished) stabilization possessed great anatomic plasticity and a certain sils, not only because beasts roamed the Earth long of the infinite potential for transformation contained penchant for immoral conduct (incest, cannibalism). before we did (and because these archaic beasts in humankind as universal substance, or rather uni- After a series of exploits, some groups of this pri- were like magnified versions of present animals), versal “actance,” both originary and persistent. (13) mordial humankind progressively morphed—either but because the human species has its origin in spe- We thus see a multiple inversion of the cannibal- spontaneously or due to the action of a demiurge— cies that are closer to pure animality the more we istic or zombie-apocalypse scenarios that figure in into the biological species, geographical features, recede in time. (11) Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and similar narra- meteorological phenomena, and celestial bodies By virtue of a felicitous innovation—bipedalism, tives: in indigenous mythology, human food consists that comprise the present cosmos. The part that did neoteny, cooperation—the Great Watchmaker, of humans who morphed into animals and plants;

not change is the historical, or contemporary, hu- whether blindly or omnisciently, conferred upon us humankind is the active principle at the origin of alien capitalism mankind. (5) a capacity that made us into more-than-organic be- the proliferation of living forms in a rich, plural One of the best illustrations of this general type ings (in the sense of Alfred Kroeber’s “superorgan- world. But the indigenous scheme is also an inver- of cosmology is described in great detail in the ic”), endowed with that spiritual supplement that is sion of the Garden of Eden myth: in the Amerindian autobiography of Yanomami shaman and political “proper to man”: the species’ precious private prop- case, humans are the first to come, and the rest leader Davi Kopenawa. (6) We could also recall erty. Human exceptionalism, in short: language, la- of creation proceeds from them. It is as if what ideas from the Ashaninka (Campa), an Arawak bor, law, desire; time, world, death. Culture. Histo- comes from Adam’s rib is much more than his fe- people both geographically and culturally distant ry. Future. Humans belong to the future like animals male complement—rather it is the whole world, the from the Yanomami: belong to the past—our past, since animals them- entire infinite rest of it. And names, in their infinite Campa mythology is largely the story of how, one selves are, as far as we are concerned, trapped in- variety, existed, as we have seen, before-alongside by one, the primal Campa became irreversibly side an exiguous world within an immobile present. things (the Pecari Yanonami, the Jaguar People, the transformed into the first representatives of various Yet that is not, as we can see, how things go as far Canoe People … ); things did not wait for a hu- species of animals and plants, as well as astro- as these other humans who are the Amerindians and man arche-namegiver to tell them what they were. nomical bodies or features of the terrain … The other non-modern humankinds are concerned. One Everything was firsthuman , but everything was not development of the universe, then, has been pri- of the things that make them other consists precisely one. Humankind was a polynomial multitude; it ap- marily a process of diversification, with mankind in the fact that their concepts of the human are oth- peared from the start in the form of an internal 23 multiplicity whose morphological externalization— What we could call the natural world, or “world” with the advent of the cosmological era, animals and plants that is, speciation—is precisely what provided the for short, is for Amazonian peoples a multiplicity adequate for human nourishment appear. (6) See Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, La Chute du Ciel: cosmogonic narrative. It is Nature that is born out of of intricately connected multiplicities. Animal species Paroles d’un Chaman Yanomami (Paris: Plon, 2010); Bruce Al- or separates itself from Culture, not the other way and other species are conceived as so many kinds bert, Temps du Sang, Temps des Cendres: Représentation de la round, as in our anthropology and philosophy. of people or peoples, that is, as political entities. Maladie, Système Rituel et Espace Politique chez les Yanomami We can therefore see that the subsumption of the It is not “the jaguar” that is human; it is individual du Sud-Est (Amazonie Brésilienne), PhD thesis (1985), Université world by humankind in Amerindian cosmologies jaguars that take on a subjective dimension (more de Paris X (Nanterre). (7) Gerald Weiss, “Campa Cosmology,” Ethnology 9 (2) travels in the opposite direction to that of the myth or less pertinent according to the practical context (1972): 169–70. “Many, if not all categories”— compare this of technological Singularity. It refers to the past, not of interaction) when they are perceived as having to the Aikewara exception concerning tortoises in the charac- the future; its emphasis is on the stabilization of the a society behind them, a collective political alterity. terization of the pan-human state of pre-cosmological reality. transformations that came to differentiate animals (16) To be sure, we too—by which we mean we These provisions are important because they highlight an essen- tial dimension of Amerindian mythocosmologies: such expres- from those humans who continued to be so, and not Westerners, a concept that includes, through mere sions as “nothing,” “everything,” or “all” function as qualifiers the acceleration of the transformation of the ani- convention, Brazilians of European descent—think, (not to say “quasifiers”) more than as quantifiers. We cannot mals we were into the machines we will be. or would like to think that we think, that it is only delve deeper into this discussion here, but it carries obvious Indigenous praxis emphasizes the regulated pro- possible to be human in society, that man is a po- implications as to the adequate comprehension of the indige- duction of transformations capable of reproduc- litical animal. But Amerindians think that there are nous concepts of cosmos and reality. Everything, including “the Everything,” is only imperfectly totalizable: the exception, the ing the ethnographic present (life-cycle rituals, the many more societies (and therefore also humans) remainder, and the lacuna are (almost always) the rule. metaphysical management of death, shamanism as between heaven and Earth than have been dreamt (8) Claude Lévi-Strauss, La Potière Jalouse (Paris: Plon, 1985), cosmic diplomacy), thus thwarting the regressive by our philosophy and anthropology. 190–92. proliferation of chaotic transformations. Control is What we call the environment is for them a society (9) Edward Schieffelin, The Sorrow of the Lonely and the Burn- ing of the Dancers (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976), 94. necessary because the world’s transformative po- of societies, an international arena, a cosmopoliteia. (10) That statement requires nuancing and differentiating in tential, as attested to by the omnipresent traces of There is, therefore, no absolute difference in status regard to several Amerindian cosmologies, not to mention the a universal anthropomorphic intentionality and its between society and environment, as if the first were occasional exception to it. There is an ongoing debate on the actions, manifests a residual magnetism that is at the subject and the second the object. Every object extension and comprehension of this mythophilosopheme re- once dangerous and necessary. Danger lies in the is always another subject, and is always more than garding a primordial or infrastructural humankind in indigenous America, a debate that is tied with another one around the fact that former humans retain a human virtuality one. The platitude that every novice left-wing mil- concepts of “animism” and “perspectivism,” which we will not underneath their present animal, vegetal, astral ap- itant learns—that everything is political—acquires explore here. pearance, in a similar (but symmetrically opposed) in the Amerindian case a radical concreteness (for (11) See Günther Anders, Le Temps de la Fin (Paris: L’Herne, way to how we often fantasize about being wild the indeterminacy of this “everything,” see our fa- 2007), 75: “the pre-human region whence we came is that of total animality.” animals deep down under our civilized guise. mous tortoises!) that not even the most enthusiastic (12) “Ethnographic present” is what anthropologists call, now- Nonhumans’ archaic humanoid latency—humanity activist in the streets of Copenhagen, Rio, or Madrid adays almost always with a critical intention (although Hastrup as the animal unconscious, we could say—constantly might be ready to acknowledge. has raised an important objection to that), the discipline’s clas- threatens to break through the openings and tears sic narrative style, which situates monographic descriptions in in the fabric of the everyday world (dreams, illness- Translated by Rodrigo Nunes a timeless present more or less coetaneous with the observer’s fieldwork. This style pretends to ignore the historical changes es, hunting incidents), violently reabsorbing humans This is an excerpt of Déborah Danowski and Eduardo (colonialism, etc.) that allowed precisely for ethnographic obser- back into the pre-cosmological substrate where all Viveiros de Castro’s Há mundo por vir? Ensaio so- vation. We shall use the expression, however, in a sense doubly differences continue to chaotically communicate with bre os medos e os fins(Cultura e Barbárie, 2014; opposed to that, so as to designate the attitude of “societies each other. (14) In turn, the necessity of this residual English translation forthcoming, Polity Press, 2016). against the state” in regard to historicity. The ethnographic present is therefore the time of Lévi-Strauss’s “cold societies,” magnetism lies in the fact that the actualization of societies against accelerationism, or slow societies (as one the ethnographic present presupposes a recapitula- speaks of slow food or slow science—see Isabelle Stengers), tion or counter-effectuation of the pre-cosmological for whom all cosmopolitical changes necessary for human ex- state, because that is the reservoir of all difference, istence have already taken place, and the task of ethnos is all dynamism, and therefore all possibility of sense. to secure and reproduce this “always already.” See Kirsten Hastrup, “The Ethnographic Present: A Reinvention,” Cultural The anthropomorphic multiverse, in its originary vir- Anthropology 5/1: 45–61; Isabelle Stengers, Une Autre Sci- (1) See Quentin Meillassoux, Après la finitude. Essai sur la néces- tuality, is thus both conjured and kept at bay by ence Est Possible! Manifeste pour un Ralentissement des Scienc- sité de la contingence (Paris: Seuil, 2006) es (Paris: La Découverte, 2013). an animalization of the human—the theriomorphic (2) Miguel Carid, Yawanawa: da Guerra à Festa, MA disserta- (13) An Amazonian metaphysician could call this the argument mask of the spirit-dancer, the becoming-beast of tion, PPGAS / UFSC (1999), 166, quoted in Oscar Calavia, “El of “human ancestrality” or “the evidence of the anthropofossil.” the warrior—which is reciprocally a mythical hu- Rastro de los Pecaríes. Variaciones Míticas, Variaciones Cos- alien capitalism (14) Those beings in indigenous cosmologies that we classify mológicas e Identidades Étnicas en la Etnología Pano,” Journal manization of the animal. (15) It is from this double under the heteroclitic category of “spirits” generally tend to de la Société des Americanistes 87: 161–76. be entities that have preserved the ontological lability of the movement that ethnos ceaselessly emerges. The eth- (3) Orlando Calheiros, Aikewara: Esboços de uma Sociocosmo- originary people, and which, for that reason, characteristically nographic present is in no way an immobile “time”; logia Tupi-Guarani, PhD Thesis, PPGAS / Museu Nacional do oscillate between human, animal, vegetable, etc. slow societies know infinite speeds, extrahistorical Rio de Janeiro (2014), 41. (15) Viveiros de Castro, 1996. (4) Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, “The crystal forest: notes on accelerations—in short, becomings—that make the (16) The difference between animism and totemism is, in this the ontology of Amazonian spirits,” Inner Asia 9 (2) (2007): indigenous concept of buen vivir (“good life”) some- regard, pace Philippe Descola and with Marshall Sahlins, not 153–72. very clear and possibly not very meaningful. See Descola, Par- thing metaphysically closer to extreme sports than (5) With some improvement in the moral field, literal canni- Delà Nature et Culture (Paris: Gallimard, 2005); Sahlins, “On to a relaxed retirement in the countryside. balism, for instance, becomes objectively unnecessary, since, the Ontological Scheme of Beyond Nature and Culture,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 4/1 (2014): 281–90 The Laboratory Planet n° 5

IT consultating room for delegates at the COP21 site in Paris Le Bourget, december 2015. Like New Pope, New Danger: July 2015, Jesuit Pope Francis invites In- atomic physics, the development of an infrastructure of climate science is bound up in the scien- dian leaders and social workers at the second World Meeting of tific labors of warfare. Just as the internet developed from desires for a closed communications Popular Movements in Santa Cruz to love God as the Father and network able to survive a nuclear exchange, much of modern climate science developed through a Earth as the Mother (see Encyclical letter “laudato si“ of the Holy desire to understand and potentially even control weather for military purposes. father on Care for our common Home, Vatican press). alien The Laboratory Planet is an artistic & editorial col- capitalism lective founded in 2007 by Ewen Chardronnet and Bureau hypothesis d’études.

first hypothesis speculates about a capi- components. In this way, Earth could appear as a talism ontology results in engineering and global Atalism whose Earth devastation with a view to pirate place gathering treasures by accidents ac- agents mix up (bodies, souls, matter,...), the accep- its future desertion would be the «alien» symptom. cumulation, and giving terrestrial society as a ship- tation of a xeno status of the being, which out of wrecked sailors society, building the becoming of a proper frame and moral values, can be built, The alien here, would be the one that would come their island either voluntary or involuntary. rebuilt, transformed or reassembled. The non-alien out his terrestrial origin to become something else, post human questioning this capitalist chaotisation to give himself other bodies, other becomings, pos- The potential design of such a complex and multi while breaking out humanistic canon, comes to rede- sibly getting back this way, other origins that these agents process could also invite to consider, as a fine a terrestrial being based on terrestrial agents his cradle pregnance would have detracted from last resort, extraterrestrial management monitoring assumed intersubjectivity, expanded to their cosmic him. He would come from a power effect who in the the planet and its inhabitants future. The destiny of environment. name of humanity in progress cosmic destiny, would growing beings on Earth shall then tightly depend strive to redefine or even free itself from humans on a large cosmic economy, on an alien manag- forth hypothesis turns alien capitalism into and non humans terrestrial co-evolution to leave ers class. The alien here, is the Capitalism effective Aa meta-discourse, an abstraction field looming Planet earth and go into outer space. power on Earth, the new control class fantasy face. over what is real, producing a strong effect of au- It is not humankind counterfeits, its bad anthropo- thority. It indexes resources from the labs abstracts Russian cosmism imagined this departure as a logi- morphic copy, nor a simple regulator but a control sites (the Market itself being sort of a lab), enunci- cal extension of humankind evolution, but the atom system, an imperceptible control class not acting ates their respective roles in a same large system. bomb deserved the right to remind us only chosen under cover but in a way that is simply not intel- This meta-discourse relates the planet turned into ones could reach it, leaving the post-atomic biopro- ligible yet. Capital, set to work, namely driven a stranger to letariat locked in a devastated planet. itself, managed as an innovating company. This dis- Behind anthropomorphic mask, of whom is alien the cursive machine - substantiated by simulations, tech- This scenario opposing average earthlings versus name of? This investigation could lead listing an nocratic narratives, convincing constructions of facts cosmic elite could yet be reversed: isn’t disalien- entities taxonomy (technological entities, algorithms. - produces capture devices and projective spaces ated working class utopian horizon to become non Entities coming out of the future or the past, non ter- orienting our actions, canalizing our desires, control- terrestrial, to become an Other? Isn’t it from now restrial, immaterial beings, unconscious forces, non ing bodies, legitimizing regulations, driving industri- on deported into space, away from a murdered humans, etc...) operating on Earth and through out al mutations, scientifically governing or subverting planet controlled by capitalism chthonian forces? it, feeding on it under purposes which have yet to mass cognition. Alien capitalism is used here as a Isn’t there an ultimate way for men and women to be clarified... calibration procedure of the real, as a strategic renew with their stellar origins? The alien qualify- tool establishing things properties. ing term depends here on the chosen centrement third hypothesis questions a triple priv- point: Capitalism is alien by disowning its terrestrial Ailege: privilege of humans on other species, What are these alien capitalism investigations aim- filiation which it uses as a simple medium serving terrestrial or not (speciesism), privilege of Earth on ing to? It first means to open the Great transforma- its cosmic aims. Human is alien whereas breaking other cosmic environments (earth-centrism), privilege tion imaginary space. From the factory planet and away from a devastated planet to keep utopian of living organisms on other carbon-free organisms its share of destructions and ecological disorders, to views. And non-alien would be these undertaking a (biocentrism). A post-humanism, a becoming alien of the laboratory planet meaning to substitute to it an tragical re-rooting, a return to Earth, riding them- the human based on an intelligent agents plurality, engineered rational and organised resources man- selves of the alien saga. relying on moral criteria freed from the humanistic agement, which are the decentrement procedures canon or even from the terrestrial and biocentric able to free us of world frames that aren’t even second hypothesis refers to Planet earth canons, arises from these questions. This post-hu- reassuring us any more? Aown alien roots. Earth would be far to self be- manism would arouse the building of new ethical Alien capitalism is a trauma input figured as a long and would itself be part of cosmic economics, community forms, new functional assemblies, and strangeness. World is unknown again, possibly which loaded the planet with gold, water, precious the experimentation of new being processes, as non terrifying. Many entities than abstract humanism metals, viruses, actors of its evolution and transfor- humans, could be defined as alien. had managed to keep out of its field of view, are mation via asteroids bombing... to fertilize it, so emerging and operating. Coordinate systems are organic resources could come to its surface. Earth Alien capitalism represents here the discentrement appearing too. Sky also finally widely opened up, would then be a place of socialisation and acclima- and deterritorialisation power, setting off a cat- black endlessness ocean endlessly filled up with tisation, a becoming-earthling of alien entities and egories radical crisis. The lack of consistent capi- worlds. aliens in green An investigations laboratory operating inside the planetary laboratory The Laboratory Planet n° 5 Aliens in Green mobile investigation laboratory is seeking collab- orators to help to develop inquiries into alien agents of anthropocene’ xenopower. The lab implements communication and media processes, reaching out and opening a critical public space. It aims to activate problematisation and analysis tools, attend recognition events and intervene in public space, relying as much on popular sciences archetypes, mass culture and science-fiction, as on analysis of current technological mutations. Aliens in Green connects open-science philosophy to DIY practices. One may understand the Aliens in Green tactical theatre lab as a symmetrical and antagonist entity to Men in Black. They act as

discursive agents dealing with human relations with life forms of alien capitalism a third type. But unlike Men in Black who operate secretly, Aliens in Green operations are open in order to allow earthlings to identify the numerous collusions between capitalist and xenopolitic interests.

Aliens in Green can be contacted via The Laboratory Planet website. http://www.laboratoryplanet.org Špela Petric Editorial design Ewen Chardronnet and Bureau d’études. Translators Pedro Soler, Émilie Notéris, Maria Ptqk, Malika Rassikh, Aniara Rodado, Rodrigo Nunes, Pablo de Soto, Helen Evans, Helen Hester, Ewen Chardronnet, ... Crowdfunders and distributors Association PING (Nantes), Le Musée du Jeu de Paume (Paris), Bandits-Mages (Bourges) ; Syndicat Potentiel (Strasbourg), Maria Ptqk (Bilbao), Gamerz Lab (Aix-en-Provence), Labomedia (Orléans) ; Pixelache (Helsinki), V2 (Rotterdam), Databaz (Angoulème), Incident (Paris), Craig Ritchie (UK), Désert Numérique (St-Nazaire-le-Désert). We also thank all the individual crowdfunders of the GOTEO.ORG platform and the Aliens in Green. Website Mateo Simon (Bandits-Mages). Impression Delferrière. Production association Champ des possibles (03 Saint Menoux). Co-Production PING (Nantes) and Jeu de Paume (Paris).