Hi everyone, my name is Eduardo and together with Erika I will be hosting the Ghost Lemurs of Madagascar podcast. This podcast will focus on collectives and groups that work with political action, with theory production, and with artistic practice. We will be looking into a series of collectives that works with these things, and we will try to approach critical theory to look
and to their activities. We will be starting with the CCRU and today we're gonna make an introduction on the concepts of hyperstition. We will be presenting a little bit of how Widenboroughs relates to this and we hope to engage everyone and keep following the next episodes where we keep commenting on the CCIU and then move on to other collectives as well. I am an artist based in Curitiba, I've been living some years here. I work with video, painting, cinema and theater and I hope that you can join us while we
comment and analyze these collectives and groups. Hello I am Erika and I am also a visual artist. I work with performance, with video and some other things and today we are going to talk about the CCIU writings from 1997 to 2003 and we will discuss the parts 1 and 2 of the book and also talk of how the how the group is organized and who are the people who created the group and so on.
Yes, our first episodes will focus then on CCRU. For someone who doesn't know, the CCRU stands, it's an acronym that stands for Cybernetics Center Research Unity. The CCRU became widely famous in some kind of niche theory at least because of their unthodox practices while producing theory in their activities at the University of Warwick some of its main members we could say were the philosopher and researcher Sadie Plant which is the first person who's responsible for the group's organization. Nick Land, who's
also a philosopher, which was based at the University of Warwick. Mark Fisher, which is partially the reason why we're here today, since this idea springs from a study group and reading group on Mark Fisher's post-capitalist desire. Code Weschum, who is a theoretician and a music journalist. And Code9, who is the owner and founder of the Hyperdubs label. So what we are seeing, it's the CCRU writings. as Erika said, it's a kind of compending of all of their literature.
They used to publish this kind of text on a journal called Abstract Culture. You can find some of the main texts of Abstract Culture at their website, the ccru.net. it's still up and we highly recommend anyone to go into the site and see a little bit how the internet was in the past because you find plenty of material of the CCRU there. So as Erika said as well we are focusing on the first two parts. They are very I think they're easy to read in a sense they are more literary, but still they are very loaded with a lot of new terminologies
and words, so it's kind of a funny and interesting reading. What have you thought about your experience with this first text, Erika? What stood out for you? How you think, what are some of maybe the main concepts that we will be talking today? Focusing the parts one and two of the book, as an overall look, they are organized by short texts, which some of them have signatures and others do not. This authorship dynamic through the text emphasizes a role played all along the narratives. Is this real? I asked myself many times. The non-authors, just like Justin Morrison, for example, in her essay,
I was a CCU meat puppet. She describes the group as sort of satanic organization, involving people like Bill Gates in their ritual. The MSN Butterfly Project, for example, was part of the satanic meetings. As she writes, after violating me repeatedly in the butterfly position, he took me down into a laptopera hall. It was long and narrow, walled by shelves of meticulously numbered jars. Each jar contained a butterfly. At first, I thought they were preserved specimens, until I noticed they were moving slightly, opening and closing the wings. Why don't they die? I asked. They can die while the puppets lives, he replied.
Well, it took me time to understand what was real or not. If all these authors were created or quoted also part of the fiction, was the text of Justine really written by her? Or was it created by the group in order to develop a cyber sorcery imaginary around the collective? In fact, we will never know, but this doubt is intentionally articulated, or what CCRU named as... Name it as... Eu vou ler essa parte de novo, tá? In fact, we will never know, but this doubt is intentionally articulated, or what CCRU named as superstition.
I-prestition is an element of effective culture that makes itself real, through fictional quantities functioning as time-traveling potentials. I-prestition operates as a coincidence intensifier, effecting a call to old ones. I would like to read an excerpt from the communique one
because an interesting movement that me and Erica perceived while reading this material is how they use the idea of superstition, right? Because they're not only theoretically building this idea of how fiction and theory shouldn't be separated, but they should be seen as things that are at least equivalent or in a constant dialogue. But also the way that they talk about themselves is full of fiction, right? And then they are already putting in practice in their writing the theory that they are pursuing.
In this second, yeah, I would say it's the second text. First you have the foreword, then you have the tale of the end. This Tale of the End, it's very intriguing and it's written in a mythological way. This is something that it's going, it's like a constant throughout the book. As you progress, you're going to see that some of these creatures, these beings, which are heavily based on Lovecraftian terminology and mythology, they seem to be like a sort of triggering effect for what is happening. It's almost like they put on these monsters or these beings on being responsible for what is happening through superstition.
And then at the first text in Identity, you have this. CCIU retrochronically triggers itself from October 1995 using a UK university as a temporary habitat. Its emergence is sequenced and accelerated by a series of singularities, Barker thresholds, the Virtual Futures Conferences, Spring 1994, 1995, 1996, the Orphan Drift Cyber Positive Book, 1995, the Collapse Journal, 1995, 1996, the Afrofutures Event, February, 1996, the CoLab's Breakbeat Experimental Zone, the Vyrotechnics event, October 1997,
and the Switch Orphan Drift collaboration, Beaconsfield Art Center, London Autumn. So we see here already how they are using this. I think it's immensely creative, and it's like this kind of literary flair when you read it. but they are saying retro chronically, right? So they are almost putting their activity like it's something coming from the future. We see on much of these passages that the difference of future, past and present, they are always in tension. They are always being pressured in some way as if the CCRU was seeking in a kind of thinking and a kind of practice that wouldn't limit itself to time.
And time is going to be like this constant theme, right, through this first text. Every time that they are talking about hyperstition, they also mention the future and how the future has this potential for fiction, exactly because it isn't predetermined. It's always on the open. So they seem to always play hyperstition in a very complex time relation, right? Impression is not something from the past. It doesn't come from one place, but it spreads itself into a lot of different times, right? And a lot of different characters as well. In this sense, Eduardo, there is this passage,
this story that William Boros was one of the characters of the story. and it's really interesting because in this passage with William Boroughs where he in the where he operated in the past as he that he actually had a effect in something that already passed it in the text I will read just a passage so make maybe makes easier. In this sense, in the tale Lemurian Time War, the writer William Boros is the main character. He operates in the past through another person, the
Captain Mission, who lived many centuries early and then Boros. I will read a short part of the text. The Ghost Lemurs of Madagascar, which he also referred to was Boris Necronomicon, a text dating from 1987, had been an exactly and decisive influence on the medical and military career of the Captain Michon three centuries previously. Michon appears in historical record as an ocean pirate, active in the period around 1700 AD. He was to become renowned as the founder of Anarchy's colony of Libertatia, established on the island of Madagascar.
Keil asserted that he had personally encountered clear evidence of Boros' impact upon mission at the private library of Peter Vasparovi, where Keil worked most of his life. The Vasparovi collection he uns overwhelmingly maintained held an anti-illustrating transcript of the ghost lemurs of Madagascar, inscribed meticulously in Mishans on hand. This is from the text on Burroughs, right? The many sequences on Burroughs, right? Yes. We must remember that these texts, they are all told from this enigmatic figure that they call
William Kaye, right? William Kaye is like this agent, this agent from the board. We're going to see in this text how the board stands for a kind of total control order, and then William Kaye is presented as this person that appears for the CCRU and tries to rescue everything of William Burroughs's life, giving the archives and writings to them. I find the choice of Burroughs very interesting. It's been like a long time that I've read him. I've read Naked Lunch and a little bit of some of his other books. But the Justine Morrison piece, I was a CCRU, Pete Puppet Mead,
it's like completely written as a kind of Lovecraftian tale and they don't even try to hide this because they are going to talk extensively about Lovecraft. And then you have this presentation on Burroughs and I feel that they are like bringing Burroughs in the sense that in a little bit of a different sense but certainly inspired by how Deleuze talks on Burroughs on societies of control, on postscriptum of societies of control. And he uses Burroughs as the example of someone that tried to break away from control, right? Control here with a capital C. Control was not simply the word control or the idea of control, but word control.
So, like, in the case of the CCRU, they bring them Captain Mission, which is one of Burroughs' characters, right? And they always are working with this idea of the shadow or the double or the twin. It's on this idea that Captain Mission and Burroughs are the same person, or in some way they are living in different times and different contexts the same thing, right? I feel like this is where they want to point as how if Burroughs was just in some way documenting what was his life on fiction. Like he wrote fiction, but he still wrote it on himself. And like he at the same time he was writing this, he was living and acting as this character, right?
Exactly, and just to continue, this meeting of Boros and Captain Mission leads to another knowledge of time, non-chronological, but spiral. 1987 is in fact the eye of spiral template, or a time anomaly, in the words of the collective. This makes me think that the break into the linear narrative, non-exclusive of CCRU, proposes to get to something we haven't lived yet. This time rupture between those two different perspectives is also written in the text as a word of time. The chronology follows the cosmology of one God universe that monopolizes and dominates upon the magical power of the world,
controlling all these possibilities, diversity, reality, ghosts and entities. because the spiral time not only opens our minds and experience, but makes us see that many realities are happening currently. Those discussions are present among all their productions. Yes, I feel like the example of Burroughs, and then he actively wrote on control, right? He was writing about this as like a concept as well. And you have this One God Universe concept, which I think is very interesting because it seems like they are taking this from Burroughs as well.
But they are talking about, I mean, we could find many words to talk about this. But I think that One God Universe really, really helps you on how to grasp of the concept. because it's how this principle of reality, we could say, or this kind of naturalization of a certain status quo of order kind of assimilates everything that is dissident, everything that is different, everything that breaks away from chronological time is essentially captured by the born, by these agents that can cross universes and dimensions and then they bring this idea that you have this final meta-narrative
which assimilates and regulates everything and I think that you could easily point this as capital or as these late bizarre stages of capitalism. They say they are not talking on metaphors. This is like one of the strongest points that you feel in the writing. We're not talking about metaphors, but we are rather trying to bring a kind of revolutionary theoretical practice. So even though they are using this idea which seems very similar to what would be a capitalism control, they still don't want you to retort the idea of being purely a metaphor. They want to think on how these concepts, they can gain like almost an alien and independent life and how they can feed from people and ideas and societies to make them happen.
Right. I think this is like a good idea on how superstition can work. It's like this idea that disseminates to everyone. And it's not only good, they're trying to do in a certain way what we could call like positive superstition, where superstition that breaks away from the norm. But how time or capital or society or control works, it's always through superstitional practice, right? They are always patting itself through the recreation of their own ideas. They always have a strong, fictious quality. There is this excerpt from the beginning in which they say that there is no difference between a hoax, a religion and a society.
And I think this probably encapsulates this whole idea that you have always a level of fiction in everything. and I don't know as an artist looking to this kind of outlook and trying to posit Burroughs as someone that wasn't only doing experimental art they say well people always try to re-territorialize Burroughs as some kind of post-modern writing as some kind of experimental data but he is actively trying to break away from disorder He is trying to make a kind of writing that can free, as utopian as the sounds, that can try to free people from the constraint of time.
And I like how they go a little bit about this and his writing technique of using montage and of using the cut-ups. Sometimes you would fold a page into the other, so you would have a part which would be, I don't know, page 110 spliced together with page 5. so I think that Burroughs might be a kind of example on how we can think on practices that they are not going for unity or for realist presentation but they are going from this kind of fragmentary way of working we have many examples of montage or collage
in other mediums as well right that try to to break away from this only way of seeing time this linear time yes because the this linear time is totally connected with language in how we and how we we create and how we understand the entire world so the collage it's it's a very famous technique actually to to try to break this structure and break the language and play actually with this rational, linear way. And when you were talking about this, I found another passage in this text that is about writing as well, and I will read it.
So, writing operates not as a passive representation, but as an active agent of transformation and a getaway through which entities can emerge. By writing a universe, the writer makes such a universe possible. And I think it's very related to the situation of Boris when you said about reality, because it's not only making a metaphor or describing a reality, but it's understanding art and literature as a tool to change the way we think.
And I think the collective try to do this as well, not only in the territory, but with their practice, with their meeting and with their events and performance and collage with projection and performance at the same time. I think somehow it's also connected to how we embody this experience of non-linear narratives. Yes, I feel like the other thing that attracts me a lot in the sense on how they try to play with this idea, it's how, and this is strongly related to contemporary art, I would say,
it's this idea that you can work with many mediums, right? They emphasize this, and later on the work of Fisher or the work of Koduechun, we will see how much they place value in music, for instance, right? There is this breakaway of the CCRU from a kind of, how could we describe this? It's like this super rigid academic way of thinking of theory and like, no, we should try to make a kind of superstitional practice and something that spreads like a virus. The virus is something that is constantly brought up, right? They even have one of their events, which is called Viral Technics.
And they say that they choose these kind of popular mediums, not because they think they are oppressed, but because they think they have a strong driving force of contamination. So they don't use this word. I don't know if it was common to use at the time, but it's very trendy right now. But for me, it's pretty much they're trying to hack into culture. Their practice for me seems like a practice of hacking into rave events, hacking into exhibition spaces with the Orphan Drift Collective that we will get in detail soon, hacking into the Warwick University and trying to create some kind of space or group or event
which didn't exactly have this productive or academic end, right? Yes. One of the other things that I would like to think on the Burroughs texts, especially on the rift part. It's this idea, which also gives the name of the podcast, which is the idea of the Lemur. And this is strongly took from Burroughs' own writings. And, well, they are talking, before this moment, they are talking about how the Lemurians would be
this esoteric society which existed before a civilization. And then in the end of the Burroughs segment, they go into detail on how Burroughs saw Lammers. Lammers, they kind of gain this other sense of being ghostly creatures, right? Yeah, I think this word ghost is also very anachronic in this way that the ghost can pass through time. And that the ghost actually is always anachronic because it doesn't belong to the time where
supposed to be or or it's locked in another time zone and and they have this really approach narrative with the Lemurs Lemurs of Madagascar that they mention and all the time as a sort of a sort of gate or some sort of civilization that continues to come along, even though they don't exist anymore. Yes, the Lémur is seen as a kind of revelation for Burroughs, like he sees himself as a
a lemur in one of the passages. And I don't know, for me, it's entirely funny, this idea of lemurs as these supernatural creatures. But I really like the idea of the ghost as well. I think this also taps into their will to create something that is not ascribed to temporality. And also another thing that fascinated me, maybe this is common sense now, but I don't know if it was at the time. It's how they approach technology and ritualism and occultism. Like normally we wouldn't face these things as too close to each other, right? I feel like in most places we make like this comprehension of technology
being this super rational thing. And for me, these efforts in these first parts, this exercise of self-identity, where you have these fictional accounts, and then the Cthulhu Club, which is this part where Burroughs comes into, and also some other characters as well. It's like almost they're trying to go into all sources of knowledge and writing the mythology of technology. It feels like they really want to bring, like, whoa, this is not something new. This thing is happening through many, many years and maybe it will happen again, but they kind of really take technology out of time in a good sense, I think.
Like we shouldn't look at technology only as something from now, right? Yes, and there is this magical power that was actually controlled by this one God universe. And it makes really, I think this connection with technology, it's very interesting because because it feels like the the past or this that the past is the future and and it's totally connected with technology because it's it's a it's actually it's it's
what they say like ancestral technology because it's not only something that it happened the technology is not just something that it that we live today but that we we leave it already in the past and somehow that will continue to be developed into the future and there is this magical of and the time so sorcery it's there is this is somehow this spirituality that keeps alive somehow and I for me I think one of the most interesting parts is just it doesn't
mention the Christianality the Christian way of of living but for me it's totally they are against the christian cosmology and this is very clear for me because it's the christian that controls and makes the other magical way of seeing the world impossible to live yeah i feel they don't go too much into exactly the the word christian but the the source of this would be there for sure because when they talk about one god universe they they say that it's like the defeat of this one god against many right and this this idea that it can only be
one or at least that succeeded historically it's christianism right and that there is a very interesting link i don't know if you if you read this specific test um tradition of rupture Tradição da Ruptura from Otávio Paz and when he talks about the time of modernity and he talks about linear time he talks specifically of that coming from Christianity. So I think it's a nice link on understanding how the normalization of a chronological time at a time that goes until there is an end there is this apocalyptic end but which only goes forward
which only goes to the end, it really is a text that deals with that pretty well, because he's going to say about how in Buddhism or in other kind of beliefs, time is never chronological and it's never forward. You're always living in circles, right? You're always living in this spiral time. there's hardly sometimes a distinction between past, present and future because they believe that the future is going to be replicated by the past the past is going to be replicated in the future and the past is always lived as the present because then you have the
question of rites, rituals that well it's something that CCRU borrows a lot from as well I just thought now where the separation between technology and ritualism began. Maybe we need to step behind. When we consider the one God universe perspective, we deal, of course, with Christianality, even though they don't mention in the text, and so on with the historical rupture of science and religion. But many non-Christian cosmology understand this limit in a different way. When we feel a bit awkward about this connection, we have to remember that we look with the eyes of Western civilization, which splits the rationality and spirituality,
making it feel like those things don't belong together. CCRU searches for this lack in some lost land outside Western civilization. Technology is everywhere, right? Experimented by humanity in so many different ways and time. When you mentioned some mythology of technology, another concept of ancestral technology came to my mind. But I'm still in doubt how deep is their argument and engagement with Lamours of Madagascar. If they really reached this radical represtition, or even if they tried, they keep it at some mysticism stereotype.
But I think it's something that I have to keep searching for it. I feel like if you try to act or think in a different time, it's always going to be impossible because everything around you, it's not working in that way, right? Everyone is in another rhythm. Everyone is still going to this idea of linear time. and I don't know, I feel they are seeking like a way out of time a total way out of time, right? There is this this part where Burroughs speaks
on let me find where he said it but he says, oh here I think it's escaping control on the escaping control section there are some quotes that they use from Burroughs where he says that everything happens under time and then he strictly puts that control, suffering, happiness, everything's happening based on how long days go or how long we see how they go, right? And I think this is a part that helps on on thinking of this this question of is it even possible to escape on this kind of non-linear time maybe with artistic creation
I think I feel this is it's possible to at least make it more complex their own writing is always trying to to make us doubt to make us wonder but I feel it's it's so so hard to get out of this model right I think not only art, but embody it through performance and rituals. This is what Elena Martins will talk about in the text Performance in the Spiral Time, when she mentioned the ritualism of Congadas. Congadas, if you don't know, is an Afro-Brazilian cultural and religious festivity. The memories are carried not exclusively by the books and documents,
but also through body and oral communication. So the rituals and ceremonies have a very important role here to access ancestors, communities and people located in different time zones. So I think spirituality is a very important topic too to mention through this process of time zone and traveling. yeah i completely agree that this question of spirituality is is like fundamental i feel like in the case of the the text we're seeing it's almost like they're trying to build some kind of synthetic spirituality right like we're basing this on on cthulhu and a lot of different
traditions and like just merging it together but i agree that with art it i think it's possible to to at least try to create or or have the experience and experience of fruition of wonder of looking into a piece of into a work or maybe into a text and like i don't know i feel like every time that i read a compelling piece of literature it's almost like you're being transported right it's really only working on you but it's the moment you're reading you're somewhere else and you're like almost witnessing another at least another experience on how time flows so i feel they
they really go to both spirituality and to the process of art making or experimenting with music because it really, it has the potential to take you out of this time, right? I think this is the importance of Burroughs from that, not only this idea of being experimental for the sake of it, but to break away from this in some way. One of the things that it's addressed at some of the beginning, but they don't really go in full detail during the text, it's their association with Orphan Drift, which is this collective that was based in London.
the collective was formed around 1992, 1993 they were founded by two people one of them being Maggie Roberts for anyone interested in North and Drift documentation you have everted a ritual since 1995 which is the talk of Maggie Roberts and curiously enough I mean, I think this kind of it's almost anecdotal but it still looks interesting. I don't want to personalize anything of the CCRU, but Land was trying to experiment with them in some way. Like he kind of made with this collective a kind of proto-CCRU group.
They were two undergraduates of the Royal College of Art, interested in creating things that dealt with internet, with cybernetics, kind of multimedia installations, the use of digital college, the use of video manipulation. And then they have this event which they made together with the CCRU. Anyone that searches for it, you can find it on orphanedriftarchive.com. And there, if you go at, we have a little problem of pronouncing this word. We're sorry because we don't know, but it goes something as Zizigy or Zizig,
which was this event where they made like a four or three week exhibition on the Beacons Field Center in London in 1998. and like Orphan Drift was responsible for the installations. They made like these college-like images of two of these gods, two gods that are present in the CCIU writings. They are Katak and Murmur. They installed these and then they played with the new Mogrenum, which is something which we can't deal with today because it's still complex. But there is this example of an art event which tried to blend what the CCRU was searching
and make a kind of artistic and practical application of it. They played with these Kabbalistic systems and made a lot of video projections. and I don't know, not only looking at how this was made, I wanted to ask another question. How do you feel that these enterprises work in other cases? Is it possible? Why is field reproduction so divorced from actual exhibitions? because as artists we know that most of the conception between our behind exhibitions sometimes have an academic feel but we hardly have academicians and researchers trying to approach
more closely the artists right or what is the artist creation the artist rhythm and i feel this is one of these cases, right? Where they try to, well, let's not only use theory as an appendix, as a way of reading into the works, but let's make a creative exchange between the works and theory, right? It's not like they were trying to apply these concepts only, but they were working together and I feel like this is very rare. I don't know if it's only the Brazilian case but I feel like it's much more divided. Because they see all this production as an entire work and not
only as a theoretical space that is of course it is important but they they see as a work, as a art as well. And actually when you look at the CCIU production there's so many details not only in the writing part but in the videos in the conferences and the meetings and and also in the each person production so it's very complex and and it's very nice to see all these things
actually working together and not only as a part or from each other I don't know Yeah, I feel like when you have an academic kind of group, usually you already search people with academic background. So you only accept people, like if you have some kind of selection, it will be aimed at the kind of curriculum you have. And what they were doing, and I would say it's very inspirational on this point at least. it's well some of their some of their members weren't even part of the university some of them weren't exactly researchers right we can see that here theory is not above anything but it's trying
to to find ways into practical things as well they had um i found this very very curious and very cool too they had like this group of musicians inside ccru who would make the the breakbeats and the playlists for the events so there you already have like a constant dialogue between art and fury and usually uh i don't know i feel like when it happens nowadays instead of a dialogue you dissect academically a work like you analyze academically or you use some concept academic concepts on your work but it's never that intimate right in the next two episodes I think we'll
go further I think we'll go further with all the questions to really talk about how they do that and continue to make a parallel between writing and not only are you writing but also So, some of the people that work with the e-book. Yes, we intend then to keep on reading both the CCIE book, but as well bringing more contextual material so we can all engage with this in a less ambiguous way,
even though the ambiguity is really part of the fun of the writing. I advise anyone to look at least in the first text, see what you get out of it. They are highly literary. They are highly worked almost as horror narratives. So they are fun to read. Sometimes they might be a little bit confusing, but it still sounds for me like a very fresh way to write in a way where you don't put something above the order, where the things are working together. Thanks everyone for listening until now. We are Eduardo and Erica and we pretend to give you monthly one episode
where we are going to be discussing freely, but based on our meetings and based on this material about some questions on art, politics, and theory inside of groups and collectives. Thank you for listening until now. Thank you and see you in the next episode.