Talk and interactive game: POST-CLOCK RATIONALISATIONS & THE IMMACULATE MISCONCEPTION
Speaker: Wassim Z. Alsindi from 0xSalon
Friday November 22, 2024, 15:00—17:00|
BOOKSHOP LIBRARY, BANGKOK CITYCITY GALLERY

Drawing upon recent publications and an upcoming book, Wassim Z. Alsindi connects several strands of long-standing research into network communities in POST-CLOCK RATIONALISATIONS: synthetic temporalities; ideologies of scarcity; and relationships between prophecy, capital, and technology.

As Bitcoin surpasses previous price records and re-enters mainstream consciousness following several wilderness years, the twelve-year-old cryptocurrency appears to have “arrived” in the eyes of the market. The value proposition of an ungoverned, uncensorable digital means of value transfer is clear for all to see…but can humanity and Earth afford the thermodynamic price tag? For as long as there has been financial capital, risk and speculation have orbited, manipulated and harvested from it. As narrative feedback machines, simultaneously reading and rewriting realities, markets exist as a distributed conversation amongst speculators driven by profit motives and an appetite for divination and prophecy. Despite the ostensible ‘neutrality’ afforded by technology advances, recognisable human characteristics and archetypes appear again and again. With their dreams of new ‘Network State’ empires, resource extraction, and colonial domination, today’s tech overlords are the descendants of Europe’s mediaeval Crusaders: well-financed, zealous fanatics remaking the world in the name of their greater good. Through a psycho-political reading of scarcity, chauvinism, and colonialism, The Chain Mail Gaze connects Crusader ideologues’ desire for blood, land, and booty, to emerging ‘frontiers’ mediated by contemporary technologies.

THE IMMACULATE MISCONCEPTION is an interactive storytelling environment inspired by pre-internet gamebooks. Participants make a series of policy decisions over time as Bitcoin proliferates and global sea levels rise: acceleration of the quest for limitless energy, attempts to exile Bitcoin off-planet, conducting an insurrection, or acquiescence to the new machine god. The game interrogates the environmental implications of cryptocurrencies, charting speculative futures that probe tensions between capital and ecology in the contemporary  global regime dominated by scarcity economics. The work unfolds as a fictional narrative, where formerly ‘failed’ states make Bitcoin their official currency, as volcano-powered energy makes them the richest nations on Earth, and eco-conscious activists start rising up against mining farms.

Link to full video documentation: https://vimeo.com/1037510418?share=copy

About

Wassim Z. Alsindi

Wassim is the founder and creative director of the 0xSalon, which conducts experiments in post-disciplinary collective knowledge practices. A veteran of the timechain, Wassim specialises in conceptual design and philosophy of peer-to-peer systems, on which he writes, speaks, teaches, and consults. He has an editorial column at the MIT Computational Law Report, and he co-founded MIT’s Cryptoeconomic Systems journal and conference series. Wassim has curated arts festivals, led a sculptural engineering laboratory and published experimental music, satirical theatre, fiction, games, poetry, and speculative scripture.

0xSalon

The 0xSalon is a collaborative endeavour which critically interrogates digital culture through discourse events and residencies, producing scholarly and creative interventions in the process. We are conducting an ongoing, non-profit experiment in knowledge sharing and collective cultural production. Stewarded by 0xSalon team members, our community researches topics, organises events, and authors lore, theory, poetry, music, games, theatre, and visual art.