STATE OF DISAPPEARANCE
by Chantal Meza
When one thinks about art, there always seem to be two contradictory statements in the room: "Art is violent" and "Art is not violent" . From my own experience I believe that creation has to do with violence most of the time before it exists as an art form. Cover and Featured Artwork for the Edition 1/22 Perpetrators of the German Journal Wissenschaft und Frieden (Science & Peace).
W&F Wissenschaft und Frieden
GERMANY
VIOLENCE & ABSTRACTION
by Brad Evans & Chantal Meza
Abstractions are everywhere. They fill the air. Abstractions can belong to the realm of the pure imagination. They can inspire wonderment. And yet they can also summon forth the most terrifying gods and empires of worldly destruction. Abstraction becomes apparent every single time an original thought is birthed. It is also apparent in the conceptual delivery of each and every philosophical claim. There are no metaphysical principles without the abstractions from which they emerge.
Symplokē
NEBRASKA
TECHNO-THEODICY
HOW TECHNOLOGY BECAME THE NEW RELIGION
by Brad Evans & Chantal Meza
This essay addresses the rise of what is understood to be a global techno-theodicy. Recognizing the pandemic of 2020 as representing the first crisis of the post-liberal order, it maps out the changing nature of religious power as it relates to the appropriation of the abstract, from earlier claims on the monotheistic God to the powers of salvation and redemption invested in technology today.
Theory & Event
UNITED STATES
ART FROM THE FUTURE
by Brad Evans & Chantal Meza
What is the purpose of the imagination when society is dominated by throwaway images? How did we come to create such a luxurious condition for ourselves, putting imagination to such waste? What role should we give to art when the only art deemed worthy is the one technology is claiming to be the principal author of its production?
The Philosophical Salon
USA
BEYOND CONTROL
TECHNOLOGY,POST-FACIALITY& THE DANCE OF THE ABSTRACT
by Brad Evans & Chantal Meza
Forthcoming
To be featured in the Book Deleuze, Guattari & the Global Pandemic by A. Pratihar & S. Das.
Bloomsbury
LONDON
NARCISSUS IN THREE ACTS
by Brad Evans & Chantal Meza
This essay addresses the narcissism of techno-nihilism into which life is being thrown. Written by a political theorist and artist, it looks specifically at the way technology is colonizing the political and artistic imagination.
Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies
UNITED KINGDOM
IMMERSIVE:A VIOLENT INTERRUPTION TO A VISUAL SILENCE
by Brad Evans & Chantal Meza
This essay addresses the violence of the digital world through its relationship to the visuality of noise and how it shapes the image of thought. Noting how deep and contemplative silence is integral to any creative and critical process, it fleshes out the ways the hyper-technologization of life is throwing us into an immersive abyss. This represents another indicator in the digital colonization of the human condition, through which the poetic is being completely appropriated by a technological vision for species being.
Washington University Review of Philosophy
UNITED STATES
MAKING PEACE WITH VIOLENCE
by Brad Evans & Chantal Meza
What’s in the proposition of making peace with violence? What is the making that’s being imagined? Whose vision of peace are we conforming with in the process of this production? Which modalities of violence are we considering of befriending in the final act of our peaceful making? Is such a condition desirable? Would it require the banishment of all conflict from the face of the earth?
nY Literature, Criticism & Entertainment
NETHERLANDS
HAVE WE FINALLY BECOME GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE?
by Brad Evans & Chantal Meza
The idea of humans being ghosted by colonising machines has a long philosophical history. From Gilbert Ryle’s earlier meditations on René Descartes and his concerns with the separation between the mind and the body, to Arthur Koestler’s subsequently inspired book titled The Ghosts in the Machine, in which he warned humanity about the way our desire for a certain transcendence has led to a particular fetishization with technology that was hurtling us towards oblivion, we have been rightly suspicious about the possibility of technological enslavement and how we may end up authors of our own extinction.