Archive

Architectures of Quarantine & Containment

One very inter­est­ing addi­tion to the pub­lic space is how we are con­di­tion­ing and defin­ing the pub­lic space with regards to even­tu­al attacks. And it’s chang­ing the land­scape rad­i­cal­ly. And the very first knee-jerk reac­tion was con­crete blocks in front of many insti­tu­tions. Now they’re try­ing to design these con­crete blocks so they seem some­thing which is part of the land­scape but the pres­ence and the robust­ness is still so vio­lent that it’s hard to hide the intention.

Disposable Life: Saskia Sassen

Disposable life. What comes to my mind is a set of dynam­ics, I think, that are mark­ing the cur­rent peri­od, that are mark­ing a dif­fer­ence in the cur­rent peri­od. And it is the mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of expul­sions. And once some­thing is expelled (and I’ll elab­o­rate) it becomes invis­i­ble. And that is part of the tragedy, I think.

Disposable Life: Gil Anidjar

In usages of dis­pose, dis­po­si­tion, dis­pos­ing, there is always a ques­tion of putting in order, and putting things in their place. Which also means of course hav­ing the pow­er to do so.

Finance is not about Money

I think one first step is to dis­tin­guish between tra­di­tion­al bank­ing, which sells mon­ey it has (or it can bor­row very quick­ly, what­ev­er) and finance, which sells some­thing it does not have. And in that sell­ing what it does not have lies its cre­ativ­i­ty. It has to invent instru­ments. And secondly—and they go together—it has to invade oth­er sec­tors. Because it itself does not have what it needs to produce.