An overview of futureplaces as a current space for Punk to rise and reinvent
Heitor Alvelos, Anselmo Canha, Fátima São Simão
We begin by positing a perplexity in this day and age: this perplexity is media-driven, and it concerns us. New media seem busy carving a paradox, one where the tacit and proclaimed promise of endless (and endlessly renewable) self-expression betrays itself in a cathedral of algorithmic determinism, a foreboding banality – while maintaining that yes, the Sky is the limit as far as one’s existential promise is concerned.
The allure of connectivity to the point of a saturated, hallucinatory frenzy knows no nemesis, no redemption: it hovers hostile, half-baked, as pseudo-ontological evidence, seductive bullying. Instant segments of hilarious stimulation, endorphins rather than cognition. Add the ever-expanding spiral of statistical complexity, the allure of “all is in order” in face of the sore evidence that all is not.
This vertigo on steroids, this bored expectation to be blown away. This conviviality of opposites, this serene paradox, a paradox that, by virtue of overwhelming presence, no longer formulates itself as a driving existential conundrum: 2014, no less.
Full essay is available on the KISMIF proceedings (PDF)
