(image by Denis Bourges of the Tendance Floue collective)

Feral cities:

"Imagine a great metropolis covering hundreds of square miles. Once a vital component in a national economy, this sprawling urban environment is now a vast collection of blighted buildings, an immense petri dish of both ancient and new diseases, a territory where the rule of law has long been replaced by near anarchy in which the only security available is that which is attained through brute power. Such cities have been routinely imagined in apocalyptic movies and in certain science-fiction genres, where they are often portrayed as gigantic versions of T. S. Eliot’s Rat’s Alley. Yet this city would still be globally connected. It would possess at least a modicum of commercial linkages, and some of its inhabitants would have access to the world’s most modern communication and computing technologies. It would, in effect, be a feral city."

(via)

The room is now empty, except for the dust liberated from hidden corners, dancing in the light that crowds through the open window.

I sit the middle of the room, legs crossed - like in a corporate ad for mobility - in front of a laptop connected to a 3G phone so I can tag my goodbye to this flat in the heart of Pavia, somewhere online.

Outside the sky is so blue. The air so wonderfully chilly too.

It's time to go.

Rekombinant points to the Institute of Network Cultures and its call for ideas for Art and Politics of Netporn, a conference to take place in Amsterdam next October.

"Netporn is an intricate fabrication of desires and mechanisms of repression. Scholars and artists are invited to take a position in this unprecedented gathering. We are looking for new openings, new definitions of pornography, based on multiple commentaries, porn theory as solo path or collaborative eroticism. Can we take a tactical media approach to netporn for belly wisdom and processing media histories? As Matteo Pasquinelli ponders in ‘Warporn Warpunk! Autonomous Videopoesis in Wartime,’ we now seek war and torture news as grinning monkey, as media makers, can we still nurture our inner beasts and media intellects? Many of us can speak of netporn, prone as we are to sexual teasers and marketing, but we want to read signs on the wall into deeper sites and economies, to frame attitudes and responses."

(images sampled here)

Jill Magid's latest project evidence locker is discussed here.

The tabs on my browser rustle motionlessly in the world wide wind, like the leaves of a mud-caked moleskine abandoned before dawn in 1930s Louveciennes.

A draft cannot be heard as it whistles a Gujarati ringback tune under an IP door. A pair of black adidas tuscany walk post-industrially down the cobbled streets of ancient Pavia.

A wisdom tooth turned first whimsical then wicked hyperlinks me to a dentist chair. On a ECG screen, under a pixelled heart, the number 70.

I am ready to pack paper books into cardboard boxes in a brick and mortar room. Meanwhile, I apply mash-up techniques to the craft of powerpoint presentations.

A travelling breeze envelops me in passion and love.

I email you a smile. More frequent posting will resume soon.