Exception
of (not) being 

Bora Akinciturk, Andreea Anghel, Vitaly Bezpalov, Ian Bruner, Pierre Clement, Neckar Doll, Léo Fourdrinier, Jakub Hájek & František Hanousek, Manal Kara, KOTZ, Bryce Kroll, Lucille Leger, Lorenzo Lunghi, Alessandro Nucci, Cléo Sjölander

Curated by Essenza Club and Rhizome Parking Garage

August 2020

Exception
of (not) being takes into consideration several emerging
perspectives, for a type of research that involves a social vision
but also individual experience, with a specific focus on the
transition phase that distinguishes the period we are currently
living. The hopes, fears, the obsessions we are creating in a moment
of complete unawareness and of economic, social, political and
religious uncertainty.

Science / medicine as new
religion
Perhaps as never before, this statement demonstrates its
greatest strength. Individuals today are confronting the concept of
existence and resilience in a rather disruptive way. It is quite
clear that we are transforming our entire existence into a health
obligation and in the name of these new rules, we are building a new
exception. Throughout history, the body has been regulated and held
as a property, either within the realm of the law or capital.
Furthermore, the relationship or gap between our bodies and our
minds, has increasingly been augmented or prevented through the
multifaceted machine of capitalism or the end of capitalism, and the
new layer of domination, such as the vectoralist dream of social
media.

Purification as a ritual
As a consequence of the
first reflection, hygiene or the purifying act generates new
ritualistic forms that can in turn produce obsessive attitudes also
deriving from the anxiety of not being able to recognize or have the
tools to defend themselves. This attitude has as its horizon an
indeterminate object that generates irrational dynamics; puts us in
an indefinite situation in which there is no possibility of assuming
rational behavior. The ritualization of disinfecting and its role
within religion of science, can be seen much like the way the
catholic church sold condolences. The large population of the poor
and some working class due to not having access or the means to
indulge in the rituals of disinfection, such as running water. Lack
of economic safety nets forces people into the open air, into the
contagion circles of those they have to serve, while the better off
and the ruling class, remain cloistered within their own homes. For
those living in mega cities without proper infrastructure, the
pandemic is almost a death sentence, or equates in essence to the
sentiment behind the cast in which capitalist society brought about
and that persists into the slippage after the fall. It should come as
no surprise the vectoralist entities such as Amazon remains
profitable if not more so during this epidemic. The proliferation of
information prevails, and with it the control of
dissemination.

Redesign: Urban / architectural
New
possibilities of transforming spaces are taking shape, cities could
take on new profiles, public spaces are likely to undergo permanent
alterations in anticipation of “eternal returns” of
pandemics. Consequently, the new social dynamics can be completely
reinvented, the role of the network and software in general undergo
an incredible rise, both in social but also in working terms. The
siloization of the subject will soon be reflected in everyday
architecture, restaurant booths segmented in glass, each patron
contained in their own private, hygienic space. The architecture of
erasure.  

Counter-insurgency
Finally,
counter-insurgency is the war form most suited to the vector class,
as it is a war of information. All moments can be transformed by the
counter-insurgent agent into moments of war, all information is
essential to the mission. The perfect “enemy” for the
counter-insurgent agent is the invisible enemy, as it is inherently
pathological. Covid being a viral infection it remains invisible. The
media as an entity of the vectoralist will have no choice but to
adopt the language, and therefore they will speak of the virus as an
enemy. Impregnating the other with suspicion. The invisible enemy can
possess the body of the other. This suspicion is in turn mobilized in
a series of rituals and internalization. The other is simultaneously
to be under suspicion, to be longed for in their realized absence
(though perhaps this is just the desire to see one self-reflected in
the canvas of the other) and yet at the same time the other is
contendable, negotiable, one’s own desires unfulfilled lead to a
regressive animosity for the other, they become the
obstacle.

Extinction and exception of (not) being
The
capital cannot hold, and as it is built upon like the corpse of a
nation, or segmented further into new iterations of
information-centric forms of power, the possibility of humanity
further erodes into extinction. Perhaps we are now in the penumbra of
extinctions shadow, caught in the transitional phase from capital
into whatever it has become. This epidemic has acted only as
hermeneutics, bringing to the surface submerged (though only
partially, as for the bearers of the lack nothing is hidden)
deficiencies and lapses, engineered voids. The state of the
exception* always reveals the essence of the typical. The poor get
poorer and the marginalized are forced into even thinner holdings of
the cast. Though perhaps in this unveiling, we can for a moment see
the other, the other that is often only but a canvas for a
projection. The path held before us towards pure extinction can be a
horizon of which one remains in constant retreat, or it can be a
force paralyzing enough to give one a brief pause, to inherit the
meaning of nothingness, to embrace the leaving. To leave and for it
to mean nothing. This lack or negativity can perhaps be a foot hold,
to help push up and out of the trench of our dismal reality edging
inwards like the approaching night, the twilight of the
Anthropocene?

* On the “state of exception”
and other analyses deriving from it, consider the reflections of the
Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben

Intro
text by Essenza Club and Rhizome Parking Garage – Narrative text
“Bread and Land” by Ian Bruner – Graphic design by Don
Elektro – Web design by Ultra Bureau – Soundtrack by M.Lethe