Cyclonopedia by Reza Negarestani

 

I had a chat about Cyclonopedia with ChatGPT. We agree on a lot of things. It's a difficult but fascinating book:

The book is an ambitious attempt to use philosophy and literature to challenge conventional wisdom about the role of oil in contemporary society and to offer a new way of understanding the relationship between politics, economy, and the environment.

To fully understand the philosophical ideas presented in "Cyclonopedia," some background in continental philosophy, particularly the works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, may be helpful. However, one can still engage with the book's ideas without a deep knowledge of philosophy, as long as they are willing to approach the text with an open mind and a willingness to grapple with complex ideas.

There are at least three layers of narrative in "Cyclonopedia." The first layer involves the narrator's search for the writings of the archaeologist, which serves as the overarching framework for the book. The second layer is the narrative of the archaeologist himself and his research on the connections between oil, culture, and history. And the third layer is the presentation of the archaeologist's ideas, which are interspersed throughout the book in the form of theoretical reflections, philosophical speculations, and allegorical fictions.

In addition to these three layers, there are also other narrative threads that run throughout the book, including the themes of horror and science fiction, the use of metaphor and allegory, and the exploration of Middle Eastern politics and culture. These threads are intertwined with the main layers of the narrative, adding depth and complexity to the book's overall structure.

The book presents a vision of the Middle East as a place where the lines between the past and the present, the natural and the supernatural, and the human and the non-human are blurred. The author argues that this "haunting" is not simply a metaphor, but is a real and tangible phenomenon that has shaped the region's history and politics.

From a strange planet - 52

Young Circle Park - a webcam in Hollywood

This is a dead webcam. From the comments I conclude it stopped working in 2017:

Rain Shadow 09/09/17 23:15 - Just to add to the Irma misery, there are now tornadoes being reported in some areas. MD 09/09/17 23:27 - What a position to be in - Irma to the south and tornadoes to the north.

The indeterminacy of the picture reminds me of Ed Ruscha, once again.

And imagine, somewhere on a server is a file, containing a five year old, forgotten picture from a dead webcam. The webcam is gone, but its memories remain visible.

These are the coordinates - Facility:Young Circle Park, City:Hollywood, State/Region:Florida, Country:United States, Coordinates:25.736300 / -80.404400, Local time:05:46

But entering the coordinates in Google points us to a wrong place:

When it should point us here:

Rilke and "deep topography"

His main focus was on the landscape, the dwellings of men, the indigenous people going back to the origins, the historical past where old forms and their mysterious influences are still present in buildings, emblems and the national character; where historical forces still resonate in the present-day and, as a subterranean rhizome, permeate the soil and nature, bringing lifeblood to humanity. Here Rilke feels attracted and he entrusts himself to his environment.

He himself understood the strong interest which he gave to this hospitable country, which was recharged again and again with each change of abode, only as a permanent entry into all that had grown and had become, as a connection with the living and the dead, with a current situation, which he preferred to regard and understand in the light of his own past.

The meaning that the poet placed in things and people in this way, always created an enrichment for them. And as a recipient he processed internally all that pleased him and that suited him inwardly and placed it inside his microcosm, which adhered to a mysterious ordering principle.

 

For example, it is not indifferent to the understanding of Rilke's world, if one hears that every time he visited a city or village, he used to orient himself very carefully about its location, he made sure he knew the dates of its history and its remarkable buildings, he researched the dwelling places of the old indigenous families, he paid attention to their coats of arms, and soon knew all of them; finally, he never left a place without visiting the churchyard where he visited the graves and old tombstones.

This discovery of the bygone and the old-fashioned is for Rilke, even there where it appears like something of a hobby and a dabbling in history, a way towards himself, a portal to his literary productivity.

When he studied, decoded and recorded genealogical almanacs and armories, epitaphs and inscriptions on old houses and city gates, stories lifted from the darkness of old times, the history of a family or a castle this activity was always a necessity, a pursuit for fertilisation en energization. His letters from this Swiss period are full of relevant notes and descriptions, they testify that it never was a meaningless play on words that the poet collected and expanded in this manner, but that he brought all things into a meaningful relationship and connection, that he built up a world in this way, into which he gradually cocooned himself and from which, when the time came, he ventured the flight into the distance.

Source

J.R von Salis, Rilke in Zwitserland, Biografie van Rilkes laatste levensjaren, Uitgeverij De Driehoek, 's Graveland 1936 - Band en omslagontwerp Roel Knobbe

Secret knowledge

Secrets as power boosters - a random find

The most powerful and sacred knowledge is considered secret, which is used to bolster the status of certain elders and chiefs. Just as the chiefs are protected from the profane world by the mediation of their akyeame or spokesmen (Yankah 1995), so too are powerful objects and events kept hidden and protected by indirection and secrecy. Most cultural and historical knowledge is considered to be secret and held by the elders; thus, it is called mpanyinsεm or elders’ matters.

Note that these poems contradict the message of the elders as cited in the article.

In the poem the elders say that the past is important. In reality they don't want to talk about it.

The secret nature of this knowledge is noted by authors in books that make that knowledge public. In the preface to a popular book documenting the various festivals of Ghana, A. A. Opoku (1970) wrote that it is difficult to give acknowledgments “in a book dealing with what is sacred and to some extent, secret in our cultural heritage.”

In a review of two books documenting different Akan festivals, I. E. Boama (1954) wrote:

Two Twi festivals which every Akan should try to watch are Adεε [Adae] and Odwira. But there are many people who even if they have seen these festivals, they have seen only a part. Because only insiders have permission to see the true [or pure] activities. . . . If you are a citizen [child of the nation], buy [these books] to read, and if you know your nation’s secrets, you won’t avoid them. (Translation from Twi by Afari Amoako and myself)

Cultural knowledge, at its deepest or most pure, was thus considered hidden, not accessible to outsiders; books documenting them violated that secrecy by describing rituals to nonroyals and youth.

Note that these poems contradict the message of the elders as cited in the article.

In the poem the elders say that the past is important. In reality they don't want to talk about it.

Some history was also considered secret. As we walked down the main street of Larteh one day, one of my key informants, Teacher Asiedu, told me about doing his senior thesis for Presbyterian Training College in 1957 on the history of Larteh, and he came to talk to one elder in his hometown.

The elder told him he would not tell him anything unless he brought drinks, and by the time he returned, the elder had died. Another elder would not tell him anything, and Teacher Asiedu, then a young man, rebuked him, saying,

“If you don’t tell, then how will the children learn?”
“Why wouldn’t they say anything?” I asked Teacher Asiedu in Twi.
“Wosuro” (they are afraid), he said.
“What were they afraid of?” I asked. He said that they were afraid that they would reveal something secret and the bosom (spirit) would punish them.
(Field notes, 19 February 1999)

The secrecy of certain historical and cultural knowledge allows powerful elders to manipulate important decisions regarding property rights and political positions, which are entwined with family genealogy and local history. As William Murphy (1980) points out, the content of the hidden knowledge does not matter as much as the privileged society the secrecy creates.

References:

Learning How to Find Out: Theories of Knowledge and Learning in Field Research
CATI COE, Institute for Community Research
in FIELD METHODS, edited by H. Russell Bernard, Anthropology, University of Florida
Web link - PDF document

Dilemmas of Culture in African Schools: Youth, Nationalism, and the Transformation of Knowledge

Cati Coe, University of Chicago Press, 2005 - 241 pagina's

Google books

Interesting artists found during spring cleaning - 1

During spring cleaning I decided to throw away a big stack of magazines. My wife wanted the floor to be visible. But I still wanted to remember some of the most interesting artworks and artists. So these are my notes. - I'm always amazed at how many good artists there are and how many different ideas exist.

1) The stark minimalist art of Fernanda Gomes.

2) The strange obsessions of Paul McCarthy. Well known in Rotterdam for his Santa Claus with buttplug statue.

3) The Cosmopolitan Chicken Project by Koen van Mechelen.

4) Cassette tape cyanotypes by Christian Marclay. Also known for his plunderphonics music pieces.

 

5) Mikael Olsson photographed and documented the deserted house of the Swedish architect Bruno Mathsson. 

6) A haunting picture by Adriana Lozano.

7) Exploration and photography around the disappearing Aral Sea by Anton Ginzburg.

8) The monastic landscape art made by Julie Brook. She lives on lonely islands and makes site-specific artworks in those far away places.

A strange country

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

 L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

I was again reminded of the truth of this wisdom (or platitude, or both) when I prepared to clean out this book I got from the second-hand market. This is 1966, but it looks different, ancient and also strangely modern. It looks like a parallel timeline that never really happened. But it did happen. And now it's gone more completely than the Middle Ages.

At the municipal graveyard

This is from Toon, Foto's van Robby Pauwels, 1966, by Toon Hermans, Robby Pauwels, Andries Blitz, (De erven de wed. J. van Nelle N.V., Rotterdam). A book about a well known and talented Dutch entertainer (he called himself a clown). He died not too long ago. But how different it all looks!

Innsbruck, just before we would start decorating the Christmas tree

It might have been in the depths of the Cold War, with the hippies, student revolts and the invasion of Czechoslovakia a few years into the future. Charles de Gaulle and Harold Wilson were in power. How calm and peaceful this time looks, compared with today.

Wall flowers

Guidebook from 1979

I'm making space for new books and I have to discard some of my old books. But I want to share their beauty and weirdness with you. For 4 euro I bought this guidebook from 1979. There was this one page that absolutely blew me away:

The type, the spacing and the modernism ... everything was perfect. This was the most beautiful page from the book. Another page was similarly beautiful, including the contrast between nature and cityscape:

And then there was this introductory text. I have removed the specifics of the place, because this is the archetypical psychogeographic text. It might fit any place. It could be Damascus, Sarajevo, Berlin, Rotterdam, Dresden or Nanjing. It sounds like a chapter from Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities:

Of the many towns and cities that lie scattered across the vast expanse of the _____ there are some that, like a mirror, have reflected the fate of the country and the whole nation and have revealed the character of the _____ people. Among them the heroic city of _____ is something of a legend. From all over the world people come to _____ to see the city, for which one of the greatest battles of the _____ war was fought, the battle of _____. Here, on the banks of the _____ began the death-throes of _____.

But victory was bought at a high price: thousands of young lives destroyed, thousands of hopes shattered, thousands of books unread and unwritten, thousands of tasks undone. Instead of a town stood mile after mile of charred ruins, a grotesque tableau of gutted windows, burned out squares and blackened facades, a desert of rubble and bombed-out buildings.

More than thirty years have gone by. _____ is now a beautiful new town. Wide tree lined boulevards cross its spacious squares; tall poplars and fragrant limes stir in the breeze; the sun flashes from the windows of the modern houses, shimmers in the puddles left by the heavy rain and catches the port-holes of passing ships.

We invite you to this city, full of sun and light, this new town on the _____. _____, like any other _____ town, is a hive of noise and activity, from the laughter of children at school to the rumble of machinery on the building sites. Its eyes are firmly fixed on the future, but its memory remains in the past, memory of those heroic sacrifices that were made in the name of the present.

As anyone who has ever been to _____ will tell you, there is no aspect of the daily life of that city which does not reflect the great tribute which the citizens of today owe to the defenders of yesterday. Our guide, then, will take you into two worlds - the world of the present and the world of the past, for the past determines the present as the present determines the future.

Now ... would you have guessed?

Volgograd, A short Guide, N.T. Morozova, N.D. Monakhova, Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1979, Translated from the Russian by Barry Costello

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More unique books: allotment garden, non-existent, memory gift, enigmatic 2, dream syntax, topographic poetry, geology, parallel encyclopedia, anti fascist, stones, politics, gilbert and george, burroughs, dark city, derrida, UFO, waves, occult, moon, orbs, Trump, Per Kirkeby, machine generated, ZineCamp2015, geographer, China Mieville, agoraphobia, hidden messages, evil guidebooks, enigmatic books, guilty places, Ruthenbeck, DonDeLillo, ZineCamp2015, ZineCamp2014, ZineCamp2014, detection manual, annotations, Proust, dictionary, Kubin.

Particles of deep topography - 24

Secret urban drift

Text: Family of Spies: Inside the John Walker Spy Ring (Pete Earley)

Illustrations: A walk through south Rotterdam, 2011, Google maps, Bing maps

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A dreary walk along through the southern shore of Rotterdam resonates with these cold walks through wintry Vienna. Next time you walk the city imagine that you're following secret instructions. That everything you do has a secret meaning. That you're being watched to see if you're not followed. Remember to act inconspicuously!

The Vienna Procedure was written on a single sheet of white typing paper, and the first time that John saw it, he thought it had been typed. But when he looked carefully at the document, he realized each letter had been printed by hand across the page in incredibly small and neat lines. A bird’s-eye view of the course would show that John had walked in a series of circles all near city parks or small plazas where a KGB agent could sit unnoticed and see both the beginning and end of his jaunts.

The Vienna procedure - At 18:15 p.m. come up to the “Komet Küchen” store (kitchen cabinets and appliances) on the corner of Schönbrunner Strasse and Rückergasse. To get there walk from Schönbrunn palace and park grounds; on Schönbrunner Schlossstrasse and its continuation Schönbrunner Strasse to Rückergasse. Turn left on the latter and stop at the window of the “Komet Küchen” store, which is looking on Rückergasse, just a couple of yards away from the corner. For easy identification please carry your camera bag on your left shoulder and hold a small paper bag in your right hand. Pause by that window for about two minutes from 18:15p.m. To 18:17 p.m., Drifting slowly along it away from Schönbrunner Strasse toward the other corner of the building ...

He walked around the corner of the store as instructed, paused, and then returned to the front of the building. As he was walking back, John noticed that there was a public park diagonally across the street from the store. A KGB agent could easily and unobtrusively watch him from the park benches there and also tell if he was being followed. Following the instructions, John crossed the street and stood in front of another display window. He was now standing parallel to the park.

He walked down the sidewalk and turned right at the next corner into a narrow side street lined with cars. The instructions called for him to walk one block and turn left, then walk another block and turn left again. This brought him back to the main thoroughfare, and he found himself once again facing the public park. Had anyone been following John, he would have been easily apparent to a watcher sitting in the park. There would be no reason for someone to take such an indirect route unless he was shadowing someone.

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About this series Over the years I've collected many place descriptions. It's a waste to keep them on my harddisk. So I'll publish them from time to time. I will add some pictures when suitable.

Enhanced and amplified topographies can be found in a broad range of literature. The best ones link to metaphysics or mysticism and (pre-) load the landscape with unexpected layers, sheets, slabs and strata of meaning. We can appropriate all this work to enrich our everyday surroundings.

Previous posts are 1:The paranoid method, 2:Rooftops and sacrifices, 3:Oil and electricity,  4:Sewing machines, 5:Rooftops and apparitions, 6:Woods, 7:Mushrooms, 8:Formlessness (2d), 9:Formlessness (3d), 10:Autumn, 11:Monsters and mad scientists, 12:Empty spaces, 13:Stars and planets, 14:Addiction against emptiness, 15:Suggestive vagueness,  16: Ominous places and books, 17: Military technology, 18: Ominous telephones, 19: Observation, 20: History distortion, 21: Spy stories, 22: Dead places, 23: Mannequins ... 27: Mysterious fragments.

The mysterious fragments

Elements of the Dutch landscape - nr.15
Particles of deep topography - nr.27

Sometimes, when walking through the Dutch landscape I'm reminded of the book The origins of the kabbalah by Gershom Scholem. This book describes the Bahir, a foundational cabalistic text.

That the text before us is in fact fragmentary ... is beyond doubt. We are dealing with a collection or a redactional adaptation of fragments. Sometimes the text even breaks off in the middle of one sentence and continues with the middle of another, which can hardly be explained otherwise than by the loss of a page in the oldest manuscript ... Other lacunae are clearly recognizable ... the answer to a question is missing ... important enumerations are not brought to a conclusion.

The landscape often behaves like this. It presents us with fragments without context, little mysteries that cannot be resolved because their field of sense is gone. (See also here.)

Near Hardinxveld

It feels as if the landscape is making suggestions and posing puzzles. It feels as it it's trying to teach us a lesson about impermanence and vanitas. It confronts us with a mystery, but the message is jumbled and fragmentary.

The Book Bahir, whose few pages seem to contain so much that is pertinent to the mystery of the origin of the Kabbalah, has the form of a midrash, namely, a collection of sayings or very brief homiletical expositions of biblical verses. These are not set forth according to any particular organizational principle. Thus the book is devoid of a literary structure. Furthermore, as we shall see, it is only with the greatest reservations that one can speak of a uniform development of thought in the various paragraphs of the text. Everything seems to have been jumbled together haphazardly.

Near Hazerswoude

Note: is seems like this would be easy to find, but as yet I've not been able to determine what kind of monument this is.

It could be a fragment of a castle wall or a dovecote.

And horror writers are also interested in fragments and ruins.
The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales (Mark Samuels)

Those ruined and decayed remains of buildings that have been abandoned due to their commercial worthlessness have more mystery about them than any number of new glass and steel developments. They are testaments to the truth that the city ... is an organic entity with an occult life and history of its own ... there are still ghosts in those shells, and ... as long as memory lingers and imagination is not stamped out ... the ghosts will live on.

Behind Hitland - Nieuwerkerk

Near Hekendorp

And, just like the book Bahir, these fragments have something sacred about them. We should chertish those places and point others towards them. Make them into places of pilgrimage.
Noctuary (Thomas Ligotti)

There are holy places in this world, and I have been to some of them. Places where the presence of something sacred can be felt like an invisible meteorology. Always these places are quiet, and often they are in ruins. The ones that are not already at some stage of dilapidation nonetheless display the signs and symptoms, the promise of coming decay.

Near Rhoon

We feel a sense of divinity in ruined places, abandoned places — shattered temples on mountaintops, crumbling catacombs, islands where a stone idol stands almost faceless. We never have such feelings in our cities or even in natural settings where the flora and fauna are overly evident. This is why so much is atoned for in wintertime, when a numinous death descends on those chosen lands of our globe. Indeed, winter is not so much the holiest time as it is the holiest place, the visible locus of the divine.

Near Oostvoorne