A Thousand Machines_Gerald Raunig

8/14/2019 A Thousand Machines_Gerald Raunig

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Gerald Raunig

SEMIOIEXT(E) INTERVENTION SERIES

@ 2010 by Gerald Raunig

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A Thousand MachinesA Concise Philosophy of the Machineas Social Movement

Translated by Aileen Derieg


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Contents

'1. Bicycles

2. Machine Fragments

3. Theater Machines

4. War Machines

5. lvayday Machines

6. Abstract Machines

Acknowledgments

7

1a

35

57

9l

120


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1

BICYCLES

If o ht it go too fat it rto*ld be the nd. ofet erybing.You wouA baoe biqcbs uantixg ootcs and thqt wotUget eax on tbe Coantl Council and mahe the mads firuorse thdn tbel dre fol theit oum xhiiot mottuation.Bat againx that aad on the other hand, a good biEcle is

a gteat companion, tbete it d gedt cbdftr, abotut it

- Fhno O'Brien, The Third Polhnun

"Is it about a bicycle?" This is the cenral questionof the two policemen in Flann O'Brient novel TheThird Policeman.In this novel the represenratives ofthe state apparatus mainly have to deal with bicy-cles, with the theft of bicydes or of bicycle bells, airpumps, dynamos and lights. Horns, rims, saddles,racing pedals, three-speed gearshifts, cycle clips andsimilar extras are the components of a refined andextensive discourse, from which there is no escape.Police virtuosity even extends all the way to stealingbirycles themselves, in order to solve the crime,They are all the more annoyed when the answer tothe question is no.


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j

I

:

iI

I

If it r about a bicycle, however, the matter comesinto firll bloom. At ffrst the bicycle appears to bequite a simple technical machine. \fith some interesrand some insights into the science of mechanics, aperson could easily grasp how it worlis. In his novel,however, written in 1940 and published in 1967,Flann O'Brien sketches an overwhelmingly fluid rela-

tionship between the bicycle and the human being.In the parish ofthe Third Policeman atomic theory isat work, a strange theory that deals with the mutualexchange, the flowing of atoms, the particles ofmatter; and this means not only the flowing withinprecisely delimited bodies and identities, but ratherthe unbounded flow between bodies that touch orcome close to one another, that merge into oneanother in neighboring zones. This flowing is found,for instance, between the feet of a walker and theopen road, between the horse and its rider, between

the smith's hammer and an iron bar. Conjunctions,connections, couplings, transitions, concatenations.The astonishing point of this elaborate inven-

tion: the more time a person spends on their bicycle,the more their personaliry mingles with the personalityofthe bicycle. This has speciffc conscquencesr espe-cially for the rnodes ofmovement and the phenomenaaccompanying them: humans who always movealong walls, walk as continuously as possible, neversit down, and prop themselves up with their armsand lean against a wall when they srop, completely

8/ A ltrolsand Machines

shifting their weight to the tip ofan elbow or prop-ping themselves up with one foot on the curb. In the'worst Grse, if they move too slowly or stop in themiddle of the sfieet, they pall face forward and haveto be helped up or pushed along. Consequendy, inThe Third ?oliceman there are more or less precisecalculations in relation to the question of to which

percent this composite and moving assemblage, thismachine, is now a bicycle and to which percent it isa human being-this percennge calculation is natu-rally worst for the postman. It appears, however, thatthe guardians of law and order charged with thismatter never quite get their task under control, neverilluminate the whole picture, are never able to bringthe flowing machinery entirely into the comprehen-sive spodight ofadministration; and indeed there arebicycles with a high human portion, which obviouslydwelop emotionality and sexuality, and occasionally

food inexplicably disappears when they are near.

In Claude Faraldot film Themroc (1972), orgiaticallyfleeing in a.ll directions, there is a small scene, in'\Mhich rhe machine human/bicycle falls oyer for acompletely different reason: not because its humanpoftion is vanishing, but because a complementarysocial component that it depends on is withdrawn.Social dependency and subiection permeate the firstpart ofthe film, which starts with a representation ofthe stereot'?e of a fordist working day. Even life

Bicycles / I


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i

outside y/ork, getting ready to go to v/ofk everymorning and the way to work, correspond to thelogic of the conveyor belt: the factory the job, theway there are divided up into small porrions in a rimegrid and standardized. Even before breakfast therecurrent perspective of the kitchen clod


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the door to his room, tearing down the outside wallwith a sledgehammer, tossing the fr.uniture inro thecourtyard and beginning a wild new life.

The roaring, the smashing and the animalisticgroaning-there is not a single word in a familiarlanguage in the fflm-prove to be infectious. Theattacls fiom the state apparatus seeking to reestablish

order with manifold and yer simplistic means (per-suasion, threats of the use of weapons, laughing gas,walling up) are repelled in laughter. In this sening{inally two ofthe policemen are roasted on a spit andeaten. And while Themroc/Piccoli attempts to live adifferent life inside his dwelling opened up to theoutside and in new, free relationships, the next morn-ing his colleague ouaide on the street experiences thewithdrawal of the complementary social component:accustomed to the daily ritual of mutually supportingand being supported, as he turns into the sffeet fromthe courtyard he overloola the new

situation-andabruptly falls over with his bicycle. This rnachine ofsocial subjection, rhe synchrony of dependency andsolidarity, no longer exists. The next morning thecolleague has mounted training wheels on his bicycle.

In 1946 Luigi Bartolini published, his novel Ladridi Biciclette. Shortly thereafter Yittorio de Sicatransformed the material into a classic of Italianneo-realism, played by amateur actors, shot directlyin the streets of Rone. Bicycle Thieues wx released as

12lAThousandMachines

a film in 1948. Bartolini had originally agreed to thefflming, but then vehemendy protested against deSica's radical treatment. Although the script also variesthe subject ofthe book in some places, the crucial turnftom the book to the fflm emerges in the mrn of thesubject position: whereas the ffrst-person narator ofdre book, a bourgeois poet, who masterfirlly, distantly

and moralizingly examines the psychology, philos-ophy and economy of the thieves of Rome as anautonomous a-rtist-subject, the worker Antonio, pro-tagonist of the neo-realist fflm, is "subject" in thecontrary sense: he is subjected and, exposed to rhecoercions of rough weryday life. For the hero of thebook, the bicycle theft is his reason to begin a calm,planned, a.lmost luurious search; racking down thebicycle or the thiefand even the theft itselfare stagedas a gracious sporr, even as art. For the anti-hero ofthe film, it is completely differenr for him this turns

into a manic, panicked movement, haphazard anddriven, dependent on contingency and fortune-telling. \Thereas the cycle of theft and re-aquisitionin the anarchic geography of Rome moves the poetin the book to own two bicycles for securiryAntonio, the protagonist in the fflm, is only able tokeep his hands on his bicycle for a brief period oftime: in the beginning of the fflm narration, in themidst of the unemployment and bifter poverty ofthe immediate post-war era, he gets a job hanging upposters, but only under the condition that he has a

Acy.les / 13


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bicycle. His young fumily bedsheets are brought tothe pawn shop to redeem his old bicycle.

Antonio's bicycle is stolen on his very ffrst day atwork, while he is struggling on a ladder to hang upthe frst poster. It is not a solitary thief, but an assem-blage of sweral components operating in a perfectlycoordinated division oflabor that ffrst of all meticu-

lously checks-out the territory. An inconspicuouslydressed man casually places himself next to the bicy-cle, then another, younger man with a "German cap"waits for the right moment and quickly rides awaywith the bicycle. The first man pretends not to havenoticed the theft and gets in Antoniot way seeming-ly accidentally, and finally a third man swings himselfonto the car that Artonio has jumped onto for thechase arrd taLes it in the wrong direction. Antoniodoesnt stand a chance against this coordinatedswarm of bicycle thieves. ri(hen he returns to the

scene of the crime, all the possible witnesses havewandered off.$7hen Antonio atremprs to win rhe police to

recover his bicycle, a first policeman takes up thecase, but then declines again immediately; the matterhas been recorded, the victim should look for hisbicycle himself. Even more so than the book, the fflmis devoted to the search for the bicycle that begins atthis point, winding through the city from the blackmarket at Piazza Vittorio to desperation at the PonaPortese, where the bicycle thieves return their loot

14l A Thousand N4adl nes

into circulation in incredible amounts and a neyer-ending stream of newly pilfered material. If theythink a bicycle will be too easily recognized, they takeit apan, reducing it to all its single parts if necessary,and then they sell these individually-bells, brakes,saddles, pumps, pedals, dynamos, headlights, tires,etc. Antonio and his fiiends accordingly divide their

attention, scanning the scenery: one looks at theftames, anotho at the tires, another at the bells andpumps. lfith the manifold srategies of disguise,however, such as switching single parts or repainringthe bikes, the special characteristics of the bicycle aremade to disappear, the identity of the bicycle can nolonger be established. A second policeman quicklyfetched to the scene does not appear to be particu.larlyinterested in solving the case either. In Bartolinitbook there are even policemen among the peddlers atthe black market, and the businesses of the official

bicycle dealers are equally integrated in the networkof bicycle thiwes.Alongside and below the both manic and

ursuccessful search for the bicycle, the film alsodevelops a study of the social machine of its thieves.At rhe Porta Portese Antonio suddenly sees theyoung thief who rode his bicycle away, but then heloses him again. \7hen he discovers him a secondtime, he is able to pursue him and catch him in thestreet where his family lives. At the same time, hebecomes acquainted with the social machine as an

Bcycles / T 5


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2

MACHINE FRAGMENTS

Bat, once adopted. inn the prod.uction process ofcapital,the means of labour passer tlttough diferent metamot-

phoses, whose culmiution is the machine, or rather, an

automatic system of machinery [,,.], ro in motion by4n automatolt, a mo'ing pown that mooes hself tbisaanmaton consisrtng ofnumerous mechanical and intel-

hctual organs, so tl)at the workers thetxeh,vs are cant

, ereb at itt con$ious linkagcs.

-KatlMan,Fugnent or1 Machines

On the contrary, ue thinb thdt tbe aacltine matt be

gatped in an itu nediate dation to a social bod,X and notat all to d h*mdn biologicdl organism. Giuen this, it is no

bnger appmpriate n jadge tlte maehixe as a new segmmt

tbat, ubb it swting point in the abstdct haman being inkze?inguith this daEhpment,follout the tuoL For haman

bang axd aol ate almdy narhine parx on the fall bodyof the rEeaiue nciety. Tlte rnathine it ixitia y a socialmachine, cowtitated by the machineamnatingitance ofafull bodl and by hunan being and oob, which ar, to thc

extefit th4t the dft dittributed on this body, nzchinized

- Gilles Deleuze, Fl tx GuattarL Anti-Oedip*s

Is it about a machine? The question is not easy toanswer, but correcdy posed. The question should cer-tainly not be: '$fhat is a machine? Or even: \(ho is amachine? It is not a question of the essence, bur of theevent, not about zr, but about and, about cnncaten -tions and connections, compositions and movementsthat consrirure a machine. Therefore, ir is not a marter

of saying "the bicycle /r . . . "-a machine, for instance,but rather the bicycle and tlte percon riding it, thebicycle and the person and thebicyde and the personmutually supporting one another, the bicycles andthebicycle thieves, etc.

The commonplace concept of the machine,however, refers to a technical obiect, rvhich can beprecisely determined in its phpical demarcatiorr andseclusion, as well as in its usability for a purpose.Rega-rdless of how these characteristics may be veri-fied today, the machine was once conceptualized

quite differently, namely as a complex compositionand as an assemblage that specifically could not begrasped and defined through its utilization. Themeaning of the term machine gradually began to belimited to its technical, mechanisric ald seemhglydearly-delimitable sense starting in the 13th centuryard has been developed since the 17th century as andical disambiguation ofthe term. The term enteredinto the German and the English languages through6e influence ofthe French machine x a purely tech-nical term alongside the still existent Lai.n rnmhina

lvlachine Fragments / 19


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concept and its delivatives, The enormous leap in thedevelopment of technical apparatuses and equipmentin the 17th and 18th centuries, their disseminationand the knowledge about them in every possible ffeldof society, was followed in the 19th century by thedeveloprnent of an economic dispositif of techniczlapparan$es, in other words a dispositif of the eco-

nomic functionality and the exploitation of theseappararuses ro increase productiviry

The vehement restraint ofthe broader concept ofmachina as an assemblage ofconcepts that was pre-viously not at all only technically connotated thusffrst began in the 17th century, and with it beganthe hierarchization of the various aspects of themachinic. The constriction of the terminologicallandscape also ushered in the increasing marginaliza-tion and metaphorizarion of all other meanings bythe technical connotation. In this era there was a pro-

liferation of metaphors of man as machine, of thestate as machine, of the world as machine with theintroduction of a universal metaphor fo a utilitadanand functional order on both rhe micro and themacro level, the functional and organizational modeof human organs, communal living even the entirecosmos were to be explained with the constrictedtechnical concept of the machine.

Yet deep in the 19th century there was dready anindication of the de-/re-coding of the machine con-cept that was then to be completely actualized in the

20 / A Tlror Ganrl Mach nes

20th century. Beyond the poles of increasingly exactcalculations for the economic functionalization oftechnical machines on the one hand and social-romantic Luddism on the other, at the same timethat the Industrid Revolution ffnally spread all overEurope there was an unmistakable movement in thedirection that would lead to generalized machine

thinking in the second half of the 20th century: inthe "Fragment on Machines," a section of Grundrissedzr Kritih der polhischen Okonomie, drafted in1857-58, Kar1 Marx developed his ideas on thetransformadon of the means of labor fiom a simpletool into a form corresponding rc ffxed capital, inother words into technical machines and "machinery"

In general, Marx sees the machine succincdy as a"means for producing surplus-ralue," in other wordscertainly not intended to reduce the labor effon ofthe workers, but rather to optimize their exploita-

tion. Marx describes this function of "machinery'' inChapter 13 of Das Kapinl wirh the three aspects ofenhancing the human being utilizable as labor power(especially woment and child labor), prolonging theworking day and intensifying labor. In the "Fragmenton Machines" Marx focuses especially on the histori-cal dwelopment that he (and others) described, atthe end ofwhich the machine, unlike the tool, is notat all to b understood as a means of labor for theindividual worker: instead it encloses the knowledgeand skill of workers and scholars as objectified

Macnlne Fraoments / 21


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machine, the producers of this knowledge lose theundivided competency and the power over the laborprocess; living labor itself regards itself on the onehand as objectified, dead labor in the machine, onthe other as scattered, divided among single livingworkers at many points in the machinery.

Yet even for Marx in the Machine Fragment, the

enormous, sellactive machine is more than a mecha-nism. The machine is not at all limircd to its technicalaspects, but is instead a mechanical-intellectual, evensocial assemblage: although technology and knowl-edge (as machine) have a one-sided impact on theworkers, the machine is a concatenation not only oftechnolog;r and knowledge, of the mechanical andthe intellectual, but also and beyond this of social"organs," at least to the extent that it carries out thecoordination ofthe scattered workers. rtr(/hat is evidentin this, first of all, is an anticipation of the double

relationship of social sabjection and, machinicenslaaeruent. rhe machine not only forms its sub.iects,it structuralizes and striates not only the workers asan automaton, as a.n aPParatus, as a sffucture, as apurely technical machine in the final stage of thedwelopment of the means of labor; it is also perme-ated by mechanical, intellectual and social "organs,"which not only drive and operate it, but also succes-sively dwelop, renew and even invenI i[.

The machine, howevet also generates a flashof overcoming this double relationship of social

24l AThoLrsand lvlachlnes

sub.jection and machinic enslayement, hence thepossible, if not the necessary collectivity of thehuman intellect. In a well-known passage of theFragment, Marx opens up this potentiality with theconcepr of the gaz eral intellect which later became,especially for Italian Operaism and Postoperaism,the common point of reFerence for an emancipatory

turn in machine theory: machines "ate organs ofthehuman brain, created b1 the human hand.; the powerof knowledge, objectified. The developrnenr offixed capital indicates to what degree general socialknowledge has become a direct force ofproduction,and to what degree, hence, the conditions of theprocess of social life itself have come under thecontrol of the general intellect and been rans-formed in accordance with it. To what degree thepowers ofsocial production have been produced,not only in rhe form of knowledge, but also as

immediate organs of social practice, of the reallife process."The Fragment on Machines not only points to

the fact that knowledge and skill are accumulatedand absorbed in fixed capital as "general productiveforces of the social brain" and that the process ofturning production into knowledge is a tendencyof capital, but also indicates the inversion of thistendency: the concatenation of knowledge andtechnology is not exhausted in ffxed capital, butalso refers beyond the technical machine and the

N4achlne Frag.nents / 25


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knowledge objectiffed in it, to forms of social coop-eration and communication, not only as machinicenslavement, but also as the capacity of immateriallabor-and this form of labor, as especially (post)Operaist theory would later insist, can destroy theconditions under which accumulation develops.Marx at least writes in the Fragment on Machines

that forces of production and social relations arerhe material conditions to blow the foundation ofcapital sky-high ...

As early as the 19th century, a machinic think-ing emerged which actualized the concatenation oftechnical appararuses wirh social assemblages andwith the intellect as a collective capacity, and recog-nizes revolutionary potentials in this. In multiplewaves and in different ffelds and disciplines, nowthe process of narrowing and disambiguating themachine as a technical machine, which has pre-

dominated for over three hundred years, is turningaround again. The long linear history ofthe expan-sion of the hand as a serving means of labor to thehand operating technical apparatuses (in which thehand ,itself becomes a prosthesis of the apparatus)to the complete autonomy of the machine and thesubjection of the human being loses its signifi-cance, To the extent that it is not limited to thedesignation of technical apparatusesJ the conceptofthe machine no longer refers only to a metaphorofthe mechanic functioning ofsomething other than

26 / A Thousand f,/lach nos

technical machines. Although these kinds of ideasstill remain dominant, they are being increasinglysupplanted by a thinking that grasps the rechnicalmachine conversely as an indication of a moregeneral notion of the machine behind it. From theexcessive literary machine fantasies of Futurism,Constructivism and Surrealism through the cyber-

netics and socio-cybernetics


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and subjectivities.' It thus thwarts, first of all, theopposition of man and machine, of organism andmechanism developed over the coulse of centuries,on the basis of which one is explained by the orher,the human from the machine or the machine fromthe human, in both anthropocentric and mechanisticworld views. Both, although they seem to be in extreme

opposition, see themselves in the conventional linearparadigms, even in rhe thwarting oftheir dichotomy asunbroken, without resistance, instrumental mecha-nism and organism share the ideal notion ofan endless,empt'' tepetition without difference, ofan overall firnc-tionality and of a rigorous subjection of the parts.

l. & th;r point it should be notcd thar the w:y Guattari and Deleuzeure the concept of the machine r1 g:4y1'b."tj:+,ih"dr,{sides ofmachinization regularly appear, such as in the rcfecrions on fx-

wide integrated r"dtalisrn," as he called the phcnomenon liamed today

as globalization. "Y-":h,-1.TlTT{9oc5

nor mean,hcre simply

the subordinated relarionship of dre human bcing ro rhe sqgid knowl-

dge ofobFctii,ing rcchniel machiner, but rather a more gencral form

ofGe collectivc rdminisarcion oflnouledge and thc necessiry ofper-

manenr, even if seemirgly selfJetermined, puticipadon. Thc rnachinic

SJ4 V tlpg4"dq opitalism eppnds rc rhe traditio-na.l systems of

-{.gff S""1*d k Guattari is very close o de theories ofrrcolibenl governmentality 4d:ry{[ 3::n,- range of controlmechanisms rcquiring the cornplicity of individuals.

28lAhousandMachines

fn contrast, for Deleuze and Guattari rhe (desiriB)

^Il-fleisonlro befound in rhesimuanq;;6

andjgelgs Human bodia collapse, iechniJ ,pp*ltuses become dpfunctional o. .r. b.ought to

" h.ltwith the wooden shoe of sabotage, states crumble incivil war or are eyacuated ir,"*oi*.

y., .h" ,-r;i1;;tsg@"f Arr.ti Ocdiry do.s nor for.g-*i

t1.. Ytl jllc. the rechnical apparatus. the sure, but> father thS _reblloAtjg_bS11eelthe, strem. _"nd iu[tures ot assemblagrcs, in which oqganic, technica.l and

sricial miihGis are ioncatenated,In the 'iAppendix,, to Anti-Oedip4, Glles Deleuze

and Fdlix Guattari not only dwelop a ,,Balance SheetProgram for Desiring Machines," but also write theiro\.r.n.{qag\igcg gpr, in undisguised, yer

frrlgdfyEl

exprrc.rr conr_rlL ro Marxt ideas on maaa ['ff"1rnvohnes an o(pansion or renewal ofthe con..p,lffr$ ol

1*:t: metaphorizing the machine. Deleuze and

*u"T* _9_o. not wanr ro esablish another ,,ffgu.atjlre' Stt*] "f th: ry:hi$, bur lgead "n.-0,-ffnG,i"

rnyenr rhe rerm ar a critical distance from both rh.everyday sense and Man


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li1\tJ.

.

ll9lr {.y. ._rgl *d machine. specificallyunder rhe aspect of ho*Lorls JL -, is transformedfrom q lqgl (wfich Guanad calls aje 9:q44 g) into1l$:.vidt try, h. t p.at"d th. rtoighi . f'otools of the human organism to t"oG ofa ti.hniJapparatus rhar he had a.lready outlined in it", Ut

"r7 "1 , 'Elo: This bg_cg Sp 9n is cridcized byDdeuze/Guarari

as iot"ffi.i.nJn r**y r.spects. Theyquesrion less rhe immanent logic ofdl; iiarrsformarionof machines as described by Man, bur rarher rhefiamework rhat Marx presupposes as tJ.re basis of thislogic a dimension of man and nature common to all

'fSi4 folg: The L'9. dqy,dop;;;.fi;r""(*-;extension of the human being to relieve strain) togar{T qplq4, in the.course of which the machine ulti_

. mately becomalat s & 9f rhe human being, so rospeak" simuJtaneously derermines *re machine as one

laspect in a mechanical series. This kind of schema,

"+.S"Unine Ao- the humanisr

spirir and abstracr.,, espe-lcially isolates rhe productive forces from ch. so.idI conditions of their application. Deleuze ald Guanari

fencr shfi rhe .perspecriue from rhe quesdon of dre1 lorm in which the machine follows simpler rools, hqw/ humans and rools become machinized, ro the questionI ofwhich social machines make the occurrence ofspe_I cihc SgbdegL a$ecdve, cjgiSLS ,JIl,g$ rygbn*i and their concatenations possible anJi-iFsa*' Beyond evolutive schemes, the machine is no

longer only a function in a series i-"gin.J ;.,"ning

3Ol A lhousan i t\,iachine.si,4achi: Fragmenls / 31

-- -l \i I Lindr*l )t rJt-' i{ : , L }{.1-c ) .c--,l \from the tool, which occurs at a certain point.tl-ul ,: thl wal the",h;;^;; ;";;;;'*:":;of antiquity a.lready meant both m"t .i"l obj."r ,ld

, By distinguishing the machine from somethingthar simply extends or replaces the humra beingl


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Deleuze and Guattari not only refixe to affirm the sim-

b, p@g'," dCq: rFg I'i+,*"' d.'"i*-/ rion over the human being. They also posit a differenceli;n an'ilf t6;Gplisti;&d optimistic celebration ofa certain form of machine, which ftom Futurism tocyber-fans is in danger of overlooking the social aspectin ever new combinations of "man-machine." Technical

prostheses as a sheer endless extension of the inade-quate human being, fictions of artiffcial humansfollowing Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, stories ofmachines increasingly pene[ating into the huma.nbeing usually prove to be reductionist complementsto the paradigm of alienation, The narrative of man'sbecoming-machine as a purely technical alterationmisses the machinic, both in its civilization-criticaldevelopment and in its euphoric tendency. It is nolonger a matter ofconfronting man and machine toestimate possible or impossible correspondences,

extensions and substitutions of the one or the other, ofever new relationships of similarity and metaphoricalrelations between humans and machines, but ratherof .o1"qElafts$,"1ho1ry 111el lC.rgS "I "r,-qd, ._41esb{S_9ly{4 r ,.f,$ags g .o-I&r- e- ,on t .tule a maching.-The "other things" may be animals,tools, other people, statements, signs or desires, lgl

^ t 'vg[- ::gl',r3'h i l9l n3 P-'oJsss 9l9r{ange'.D not h ihg par.adigT.-oflqUs_r 9991.-

According to G**-i, j t" tl-gEl@- $9p'f +:-l3*i":-1". s: 9:d:s- 9i-iri9r :::rl*"v

32 / A Thousand I'Jlacl rc$

D lL--v.iitrl ,,.,.S, u.- ^ i.o*n*1 1, t . .;tcti,ao\J- (1,. t-zln\'- a'J s'\:t''l I'-u'o


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I o lr.{ ,r;i C-L,,' "'o-, ', ".\a -J ?;:J''^" .'*\ -^-A c-\concept ftom its commonplace connotarion? Gull?{i

hd 4r4r$4d -' -4.n: 9p hi Tary-:_::1r ll3the

fate

-12609,spelqg4b-agarnir $c-badgrolrd,of

micropolitica.l elpq$gncqs and leftist q


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The term machina has appeared in Ladn sincePlautus and Ennius in the early second century B'C'

and increasingly during the imperial era and late

antiquirv, iniJaly as a loan word from rhe Doric

".,.tl,thrv of ,]r. colonisrsof lower Italy The Larin

*orhiro ihtr" assumes all the meanings of the Greek

mechani (the Doric word, already relatively close to

thel-.atin,wx machazl)' Its more general meaning as

"means, contrivance, devicd' does not further distin-

suish berween material and immaterial means' but

in.ttd allo*s them to overlap and merge This basicextension of the term between a material dwice and

a contdving aPproach, and especially the many ovet-

Iaps of both aspecs remain irs characterisric in most

l*g.l"ga, in whl.h ir has developed over the course

of iroi"rrrity. In ancient Greek and Latin the term

spread primarily into two fields of application-the

,innifi"at.. of ,his for Guatrarit and Deleuzes,n"r..hin. -n..p, i, not to be underestimated On rhe.,ne hand there was the miliury use as an aPPamtus

for besieging, conquering or defending cities' in

o,h., *oidr"", a war machine' while on the otherhand it was also used as a comprehensive term for the

machinery of the theater,

This tifurcation into the fields of war and the-

ater, however, does not imply a separation into the

material and the immaterial meaning along the

boundaries of these two fields ln both cases of appli

cation the term both holds the technical meaning of

36/ A Thousand lvlachil:es

apparatuses, frames, devices as well as the psychosocia.lmeaning of trick, artiffce, deception. This ambiguityis most adequately transported in English by theword "invention" (from Latin inuenio meaning'toffnd, to come upon'): the machine is an invention,an inyented device, and it is an "invention" as aninvented story as a deception, as a machination.

Technical innovation and inventiveness blur togetherhere along the two mutually merging lines of themeaning of machine.

This kind ofneighboring zone between the doubleartifice of technical art and artistic creation devel-oped for the ffrst time in rhe period of the zenith ofGreek drama in tlle fffth century B.C. In the theaterof antiquity, machine meant primarily the deitymachine, the theds epi mechanls, the drus ex machina.The rnechani, or later in Roman theater the machina,was the general term for all stage machines, such as

thunder and lightning machines or dwices for makingthe dead vanish into the underworl d, However, themachine of the Atdc theater was a speciffc deviceplaced above the left stage door. All the gods andheroes of the air appeared on rhis left side, so rheyhad to be lowered to the stage from above. The actorsplaying deities probably hung from a hook fastenedto the belt, which was in turn attached with a rope toa system of rolls or pulleys. \7ith the help of thismachine a god or goddess thus appeared from above,assurning a special function within the plot of the

Theaier L,1ach nes / 37


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20/61

ill

It was fuistode who first criticized this use ofgods on suspension and fllng machines in hisPoetia, affi,rmirrg that the resolution of the storyshould result from the story itself and not through a

deus ex rnchina.Instead, divine interventions should

only be represented in the meta-situations that lieoutside the stage plot, which have occurred before or

after it, in other words in prologues ard epilogues.This general rule in fuistotle's ?orrrr makes the dcu.sex machina ofEuripides's tragedies look like an expe-dient device for a mediocre playwright, necessary fordisentangling the dramadc knots he has created, butwhich virtually tal


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i

conflicts and differences (that were not to be tamedimmanently) into transcendentality: "The ridingmessengers of the king rarely come when thosekicked have kicked back."

Post-rwolutionary theater in the Soviet Union ofthe early 1920s substantially influenced (not only)Brecht as the climax of the flight from hiding the

machines and machinations ro invenring new inter-rupting apparatuses and narrative breaks, which wentfar beyond the singular appeiuance of the dew exrnachina. The October Revolution was accompanied

by the vehement question of revolutionizing art,induding the bourgeois theater. Should the theater ofthe scientific age emerge fiom a transformation of thebourgeois theater, or as a radical new beginning, ordid the only solution consist in complerely reiectingtheater as a bourgeois practice? Those who decided,under the name "Theater October," in favor of solu-

tions in between transformation and new beginning,increasingly dispensed with illusionist plots and theprychology of the figures, did away with the peepshow stage, the curtain, the backdrops, built newtheaters, left the theater. Instead of using themachina as a divine suspension of difference, theradical theater-makers associated with Meyerholdand the First Moscow \Torkers Theater were moreinterested in multiplying diflerences, making themdance with the help of a multiple machinization ofconcepts and practices. Here the machine was given

42l ATrrousand Machlnes

its threefold composition as the biomechanics of theactors, as the constuctivism of the technical appara-tuses and things, and as the social machine of theTheater ofAttractions. The machine material of thepost-revolutionary Soviet theater encompassed thebodies of the actors, the construction, the audience:it anticipated the concatenarion of human organs,

technical apparatuses artd social machines that con-sritute the machine for Deleuze and Guattari.Following far-ranging experiments on Cornrnedia

dtll arte and, on rhe traditional Russian circus genreof the Balagan in the i910s in his Petersburg studio,which was simultaneously an acting school and a lab-oratory in Moscow in the early 1 920s, VE. Meyerholddeveloped more than a new acting rnethod; hismethod of biomechanics was a new, generalizedtheater pedagogy. "The body is a machine, the workerthe machinist," according to Meyerhold, and thisespecially

implied experimenting with all flows ofmovement. Against the background ofan idiosl'ncraricappropdation of Taylorism, Meyerhold prirnarilybegan to rationalize the apparatus of movement:the body of the actors as model for a generalizedoptimization of movements, the biomechanicalexperiment as a model for the potential utilization inlabor processes outside the realm of the tJreater. Yetunder the mantle of the Thylorist vocabulary and aseemingly overzealous udlitarianism, Meyerhold andhis colleagues carried out experiments little touched

Thaier lj.4achines / 43


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by the problems of the scientific organization of laborand the creation of a New (Soviet) Man: They aimedat denaturalizing the theater.

Contrary to the psychology of the plot and to anempathetic audience, the core components of biome-chanics were the rhythm of language and the rhlthmof physical movementJ postures and gestures arising

fiom these rhythms, coordinatingthe movement

ofthe body and bodies with one another. The develop-ment of the plot was not to come from "within," fromthe psyche or mind, but rather "from outside,"rhrough the movement of the body in space. Thesecomponents were created through an economy ofmeans of expression, control of bodies and gestures,precision and tempo of movement, speed of reactionand improvisation. Meyerhold's acting school was notmerely a school for gymnastics and acrobatics, butrather attempted m bring the actors to calculate andcoordinate their movements before that and beyondit, to organize their material, to organize the body.

As a ffrst larger presentation of biomechanics,The Magnanimoas Cuchold, a contemporary play bythe Belgian author Fernard Crommelynck, pre-miered in furil 1922. Sculptural images of bodiesand movernents, athletics and rhythm permeatedthe scenes. The stage was open far to rhe back, allthe way to the brick wall, all the stage machinerywas tralsparent. The performance thus became the ffrstconcatenation of biomechanics and constructivism:

44 / A Thousand N/lach nes

as much as Meyerhold separated the bodies of hisactors in rraining and treated thern individually asmaterial, jusr as litde did he forget the machinic envi-ronment of these bodies, the things, the objects, thematerials and constructions on rhe stage. In a rapidsuccession of treatmenrs and new plays, in collabora-tion with constructivist artists he also created a theater

of rhings rhar no longer soughr pure represenrarionsand images, but instead to present the things them-selves, Instead of an illusionist stage set, insrad ofprops and stage decorations, artists like LiubovPopova and Varvara Stepanova invented anddesigned constructions, prototypes, handled objects,which were placed for use on an otherwise emprystage. In this movement ofinventing, (re) arrangingand reappropriating things, technical apparatuses,and stage construction, the theater machinery alsomoved from the practice of being most skillfully

hidden back inro Lhe Iight ofperception.

The scenery fot The Magnanimous CucboA, con-structed by Liubov Popova, was no longer actuallyscenery bur was instead a single machine made ofplanks, ramps, ladders and scaffolds. In analogy tothis, there were no cosfumes either, but rather uni-form blue suits also designed by Popova. The actorsmoved around the srage not only horizontally, butalso venically, climbing, exercising, sliding, usingPopova's machine as the fiame for their movements.

Tl:ter N4achhes / 45


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,

I

I

riI

rl

il

i

l.

lll

II

In the next biomechanical-constructivist piece bythe Meyerhold Theater, Threlkin's Death, YarvaraStepanova chopped up the machine into manyobjects, which she called "apparatuses," small andlarge, mobile furniture mo&-ups. The actors wereable to apply and o


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look like, based on an emergency, an event, animpending disaster in the midst ofthe difiicult polit-ical transition phase following the Rwolution. At thesame time, this model was no longer anchored in the

glorious periods of the battles on the barricades, theRwolution, but rather in the weryday life of thefactory and the difficulties ofproduction. The imrna-

nent criticism of the sloppy NEP director of the gasworks in the play, who had repeatedly postponedobtaining gas masks, corresponds to Eisenstein andTietyakov's acual flight from the theater. The reasonfor their exodus from the theater was not only theglorious Proletkult idea of 'culture for all, but alsothe simple and sober insight that its audience wasincreasingly interspersed with the Nouveau Riche ofthe NEP In the factory as well, howevet the theateractivists soon realized that they were no more thaltolerated, and they left again after four performances.

For Eisenstein, this mqvement of flight fiom thetheater consequentially ended not in the factory butinstead led him on to fflm.

It had already become clearly evident a year ear-lier that biomechanics and constructivism had notyet gone far enough in precisely investigating thematerial of the machine. They had to expand themachine concept from the body-machines of rheactors and the machine consuucdons on the stageto the tocial machine, which stretched beyond theprotagonists on the suge to a diffuse and illimitable

48 / A Thousend lvlaci nes

assemblage: it was the viewers that should ffnally beinflamed by the trained elastic actor-machine andthe constructivist apparatuses. The experirnents ofthe radical leftist altists in the brief golden age ofthe Theater ofAttractions in I923t24 did not takethe direction of the dissolution ofart and life, as in thelarge-scale mass spectacles of the post-revolutionary

period, but rather the direction of dweloping speciffccompetences of the actors as well as a specific audi-ence. This was accompanied by a precise assessmentofthe relationship between stage and audience space,actors and audience.

In dre course of Meyerhold's experiments inPerersburg and Moscow, a special form ofsegmentingthe scenic action into small units, acrobatic 'hum-bers, and rapid slapstick sequences had beendeveloped. In additioq to Meyerholdt experimentsin the i910s, the early futurist theater experiments

by Madimir Mayakovslcy, Velimir Chlebnikov arrdAlexei Kruchenykh, but also the Dadaist excesses in'Western Europe were crucial for the Theater ofAttractions. However, whereas the Dadaist farcestook place in the marginal setting of places like theCabaret Voltaire, the theater of the leftist proletkultbrought the circus, the fair acrobatics, and theattraction into the oflicial theatr ofthe young stateofthe Soviet Union. Tietyakov and Eisenstein calledtheir Soviet variation the Theater of Attractions,,'r}tus inventing a molecular concatenation of single,

Theater lvtach nes / 49


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i

indepcndcnt attractions with their aggressive,no-"nt, *d rislry action Processes' In analogy tothe ftagmentary compositions of Hean{idd' Grosz

and Roich.nko, they transformed the satic theeter ofdepiction and of milieu description into a dynamic

"rrd.cc"ntri" theater, deconstructed the molar-

organic linearity of the theater plot and mounted

thf acractions into an orgixtic moleculariry' Thefrasmentadon of the plot, is segmentarion into

"oi..tionr,raised the question of a new form of the

concatenation of attractions, of a montage that should

trat the social machine in their sense' Eisensteinstressed that th artracdon was intended to be the

opposite of the absolute and the complete' especially

blu"e it *"" based e


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observed and degraded to a research object' In a

i"rrhlv utllitari"n and behavioristic perspectivei rhe

;i;;"* fragmented inro small unis of time and,h"

",rdi.r,aa

-.."a,ions wele charted according to

twenty standard reactions' From silcnce all theway to

,fr.Jrrg , ri"gt onto the stage' those responsible,"gir,"r"i *"r'"hing down to the smallest detail' This

,ri",hod of ,ol-.i.e evaluation was intended to sup-olv insiehts for new productions' but it led instead to'.'or. oF" ,,",.

"op"t"tizadonof the theater' Through

th",,ot tion,rot orrly of audience reactions' but also

ofall aspects of production (from the actors and stage

o"r"onn.l ro rie bookkeeping), it was possible toimmediately find fault wirh misrakes and omissions'

The fetish of'tcientific calculatiorf' developed into a

comorehensive control system' Internal rationaliry'

io,nin* t.f,. Pans into the whole' panopticsurvey: all

',tr. .ol^pon"*t oF rhe ideal of the purely rechnical

machine formed the ideal state apparatus'

In some of Eisenstein and Tretyakovt texts' it alsoappea$ at ffst as though the linear progression ftom

tie pohtical goal ofthe thater to societal effect dom'

irr.al .o .,rci - *.nt that one could speak here ofan overcoding of the machines by the state apParatus'

p"rh"p, .u"n-of" glimpse of the Sulinist politics ofa

iotalitarian "purge." This dicdon, however' is mainly

determined by the contemporary iargon in the years

following the Revolution and later by the incipient

52 / A Thousand N,lachines

censorship of theater operations and the culturalpolitie.l discourse following the inroduction of theNEP This was additionally disambiguated and closedin the one-sided historicization by later art and the-ater studies (both in the Soviet Union and in the"\W'est"), which excluded phenomena deviating fiomthe doctrine of Socid Realism ftom their narratives.

In comparison, in Eisenstein and Tietyakovtplays a

parody can be recognized of the simple, linearnotions of agitation, which are based on the pseudo-sociologica.l screening of class composition andsought to optimize its effects without deviatioru.Eisenstein and Tietyakov did not construct rheaudience as an ob.iect, but instead speciffcallyanempted to provide an impulse for trying out newmodes of subjectivarion. Vhen they spoke of theaudience as "material," this was in andogy toMeyerhold's relationship to the biomcchanicalbody, and the point was the experimental build-upofrcnsion, the organization ofthe social arrangementinto self-organization. The montage of anractionsconjoined singularities as human, technical andsocial bodies in an unexpectcd way, thwaning thehorizons of expectations and ulrimately suppliedmaterial for eruption and tumult.

Half a year after the \Yise Man, Tieq'akov andEisenstein brought a politicized version of theirMontage of Anractions into the Proletkult Theater.On the sixth anniversary of the Rwolution, on 7

Thealer Maclrins / 53


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November 1923, Tietyakov's play Can You HearMoscow? opened- Subtided as "Agit-Guignol," it wasintended to link agitation with the device of horror(following the practice of the Paris theater GrandGaignofi. As a logical development of politicizationfrom the formal experiment wirh "abstract" attrac-dons in the Vise Man to political agitation, it was

animated by a concrete agitational mission:Tietyakov had written the play as a propaganda playand action to mobilize volunteers from Moscow forthe anticipated rwolution in Germany-which failedfrom the start due to the historical developmentsThe plot: a provincial governor with the signiffcantname Craf Stahl (Count Steel) wants ro stage a parri-otic fair as a counter-staging to expected proletariandemonstrations on the anniversary of the OctoberRevolution. He plans to present a historical play andthe festivities are to culminate in the unveiling of a

statue of an 'Iron Count,' m1'thical ancestor of GrafStahl. However, stage workers and actors change theplay. Following increasingly clear allusions to phe-nomena of exploitation, a gigantic portrait of Leninis unveiled, which incites the armed revolt. Heroicexploited people, marryts and revolutionaries on one

side, caricatured exploiters and their ideologues,provocateurs ald conformist social democrats on theother. The climax ofthe play (not only the play in theplay) celebrares the upheavai that leads out of thetheater into life. At the end of the plot a protagonist

54/ A Thousand lvlachlnes

agitates the Moscow audience with the words: "Canyou hear, Moscow? " And according to the script, theaudience is to respond unanimously: "Yes, I hear "'S?hat actually happened, was obviously somethingdifferent, The tumultuous excess on the stage soinflamed especially the yourhfirl audience and theextras that the actors playing the bourgeois were

attacked even during the play; following the conclu-sion of Can You Hear, Moscow? , the emotionalizedaudience purportedly poured into the streets intumultuous scenes, singing and "wildly flailingagainst the shop windows."

For Tietyakov and Eisenstein, the evaluation ofthesereal effects of their performance on the anniversaryof the October Revolution turned out to be quireambivalent and self-critical. Yet nevertheless, itrepresented a predictable consequence of the exper-

iments of machinic theater in the early 1920s: it wasthe program of the Theater ofAttractions to developa form that rurns emotions into exrreme tension, inorder to ultimately achieve a "release of the audi-encet emotions" (Tietyakw) through the montageof these attractions. Vhereas the machinery andmachination of the early deus ex machina turned theaction of the theater play from the organic into theorgiastic, the threefold concatenation of the post-rwolutionary machines was to inrervene in theworld, creating worlds instead ofa representation of

Theater lvachines ./ 55


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the world. The montage of physical movements inbiomechanics, the montage of things and technicalapparatuses in the constructivist stage serrings, themontage of the audience as a social machine in dreproductivist Theater ofAttractions sought not onlya composition of organic, technical and socia.lmachines, but also the becoming-orgiastic of the

olgans, the flows of rhe technical constructions, theinsurrection of the social machine.

56 / A Thousand lvlach nes

4

WAR MACHINES

The uar nachine it tbat ,romad ifitntion thdt it fdc,hzt u4/ not at itJ ?rirn4ry objcct blat a, itr r.cond-otdt,suppltmmury or ynthetic objeaiac, i4-/19- ya|g .t 41j1n/zgxaiael in ryqh z u4f.4, to_&$r-oAt y S 1?-fornand ciE-form witb uhicb h collida.

- Gilles Deleuze/Flix Guattari, A Tbousany'. platcaxs

The object of rhe war machine, as Deleuze andGuatari never dre of explaining in their "Treatise onNomadology' it A Thoasand phreaar, is not simplywar, but 'the .Cewi g,..& ggqrll _b9 of flight, thecomposition of a rtnoo,h rp".. *d of rh. moi,e-entofpeople in rhat space." The weapons of this machinearc nomadic lines of flight aad invention. The combi-aation of flight and invention, of the desenion liomthe state apparatus and the movement of instituting,the.invelti_on of an instinct fight is the specifi"cqualiry ofrhe war machine, in Deleuze's favorite for-mulation: 'Fleeing yes, but while fleeing looking for aweapon." The _martial dimension of the war michineconsists in t . l_.Xl@; ffi cEp"Aty t ;_ _-:..-'._j'-


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charge, in rhe creation of other worlds. 19-gdy$e-appJgpnarisn bla s{41 3pp4glgt&gsll3ryf3lrllifre war machine into a military appararus, a war.

Some time ago I called the theater machine ofthe PublixTheareCaravan a war machine, follow-ing from discourses in the genealogy of WalterBenjamin's essay on "The Critique of Violence"seeking to problematize the dichotomy of violenceand non-violence. Referring to the Caravan not onlyas a theater machine, but also as a war machine wasintended to actualize the overlapping of nomadismand the war machine developed by Deleuze andGuartari in the description ofa micro-political, artistic-activist practice . To maintain that the Catavan-asI wrote at the time-operates on a line of flight,offensively as a war machine, does not at all meananributing a special form of violence to it. On thecontrary the war machine points beyond the dis-course of violence and terror, it is the machine thatseels to escape the violence of the state apparatus' theorder ofrepresentation. Conversely, the state aPparatus

attempts to force the non-representable under thepower of representation, for instance by making aBlack Block out ofthe Caravan. I wrote that after theNo-Border-Tour in the summer of 2001, which ledfiom Vienna to the \(EF summit in Salzburg and aborder carnp in Lendava to the G8 summit in Genoa,ending there with the arrest of most of the Caravanactivists by the Italian police.

58 ,/ A Thousand l\4ach nes

Several years later, i n faJl 2005 , before a provincialcoun in the Upper Austrian rown of Lambach, thestriation ald retreat ofthe war machine was repeated,but this time without the international flair of anti-G8 protests. The Caralan activists were charged withunauthorized assumption of authority and deception,because of an unannounced action in a school inLambach (invisible agit-theater on rhe theme of bio-metrics) during rhe Festiual of the Regions 2003, dretheme of which was "The Art of Enmity." In thistown-coult farce, there was no trace left of attacks,offensives, of \earching for a weapon in fleeing," andI had to politely tesdfy, limited to the role ofan "artexpert," that the action was a matter of an, that thisform ofart is established and recognized and drat theartists certainly meart no harm to the children. As theCaravan activist Gini Miiller once formulate d inreference to the arrest of the PublixTheatreCaravanand the trials after Genoa: "The question of whether

the line of flight is transversal or terrorisr was to bejudged by the molar tribunal."'

I. Gini Miiller, "Tranwersal orTe[or?," http://eipcp.ner/ffans\,rsal/0902/mueller/en. My essay was published as "A Va-Machine againsrde Enpire. On the precarious nomadism of the publixTheatre-Caravan," http://eipcp.ner/ffansversaV0902/raunig/en. On the historyof the PublixTheatreC-aravan (including Genoa and Strasboug), cfC'eraldP,aj"nrg Art and Rewl*tio', Los Angeles: Smiotext (e),2007 , onde lambach "biometria uial," cl hnp://lambach.volttheater.ar/.

\,l/er [,4ach rcs / 59


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The arrest and conviction of the Caravan thusreveals a different relationship between war machineand state apparatus than rhe one familiar ftom IThousand Pkteaus: in the Treatise on Nomadology

Deleuze and Guattari describe how the state appara-tus takes over the wat machine, subordinates it to itsown objectives and makes war its immediate pur-

pose. In the appropriation ofthe war machine by thestate apparatus, flight and invention ultimately dobecome war, the war machine becomes a (quasi)military apparatus. Perhaps the dwelopment of thephenomenon of the Black Block from Seanle 1999to Rostock 2007 could be interpreted as this kind ofprocess ofappropriation. The development, in which

the ffrst mentions of the black block' in the eady1980s started from the mediatization and ciminal-ization of the autonomous activists in Germany, inwhich the images generated in the process were only

secondarily-sometimes ironically, sometimes withdeadly se riousness-taken over and afffrmed byvarious fractions of the left, seems to have repeatedirself in rie lasr ten years with greater intensity: overthe course of a brief decade, the construction of ablock, which was initially mainly a media constuction,both dichotomously and rymmetrically opposed tothe block of the Robocops increasingly lead to anactualization ofthis image ald to the transformationof sections of the no-global war machine into a war, State apparatuses (here, mainstream media

60/ A Tlro.rsand Machines

and politics) generate war in the sense ofa coercedintegration of the war machine into a dually griddedorder, in which the war machine itself (or its machistcomponents) ultimately become a (quasi) militaryapPuatus, a state aPParatus.

The conceptual opposition (war) machine-thestat appararus must nevertheless be understood as

a relationship of exchange, as an infinite multitudeof possibilities of struggle, of mutual overlappingthat dwelops various layers ofcoding and overcodingwith their respective effects. In the extreme case ofThtmroc, for instance, two policemen as figures ofthe state apparatus are simply eaten in a process ofanthropophagF. Yet even cannibalism is not to beunderstood as pure negation, but rather as a specialrelationship of the war machine Themroc to theultimately ingested policemen. Themroc's gentlewildness and his comrades spreading out do not

correspond to a mob that huds itself at the stateapparatus as a dense mass, as an agitated crowd(Hetztnnse, to use Elias Ca.rretti's terminology), butrather as a formless, non-conforming assemblage,unreal and yet turning in a very corporeal way to thebodies of the others. Yet this assemblage is not unlikethe diffuse one of the bicycle thieves, in which thRoman policemen seem to be incorporated in acompletely different way. And even the eternitymachine of The Third Policemaz appropriates bothhis colleagues, who scurry around in the immeasurable

War lMachines / 61


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space of the underground machine and operate itwithout a deeper understanding. The anarchica.lquality of the war machine, as is evident here again,seems to be equally on the side of resistance and ofpower, supporting capital as well as the flight from

capitalism; it car be overcoded in a fascistoid way,but it can also generate emancipatory or even revolu-

tionary flows. It is only the analysis of the specificrelationship of war machines and state apparatusesthat sheds light on the actualization of these ambira-

lences and the sratus oI rhe respective appropriation.

The collision of the micropolitical praxis of thePublixTheatreCaravan wich the srate appararus inGenoa and in Lambach is a different case. Here it isnot a matter of appropriation, of machinic enslave-ment, of coding and overcoding, but rather anattempted annulment forced into the grid of mediarepresentation and jurisprudence, the war machine is

annulled. Yet this annulment will probably never bemtal, there is always something left over: a remainder

of the production of desire, of invention, of an actu-

alization of the possibilities that have been openedup. Following the trauma of Genoa, in the summerof 2002 the PublixTheatreCararan hence developedincreased activity again, especially in the context ofthe international border camp in Strasbourg. Theretheir war machine consisted ofan old English double-decker bus, which again conioined the two compo-

nents of rcchnical skill and artistic cunning. The bus

62 / A Thousand lr lachines

was a technical machine, a composite of the oldmechanics of the automobile and high-tech equip-ment inside it, and it was also a concrete localizationof the micropolitical social machine of thePublixTheatreCaravan. After their enperience in theautonomous squatter milieu, in the transnationalanti-racist Noborder network, and in the anti-G8protests in Genoa, in July 2002 the Caravan machinewas ready to be coupled with the social machine ofthe border camp in Strasbourg. On the open upperdeck and around the locations of the bus in the cityof Strasbourg (especially the expansive area in frontof dre train station) new arrivals to the city weregreeted, information about the border camp wasdistributed and parties were enjoyed; yet beneath thesplendid surface, in the belly of the bus, state-of-rhe-art electronic equipment enabled a counter-publicmedia and communicarion guerrilla praxis ,..

2000 years earlier, machinic materiality andmachination, these two componenft of the thearermachine are found in the predecessors ofthe Caravantheater and war machine. In ancient wa rfate, machi-na appearc as a technical expression in coniunctionwith carrying out sieges. From the classical Greek andHellenist poliorcaica to the warfare authors of lateantiquity, all kinds of siege machines are listed asmnchinae, especially those for overcoming city wallsor for battles at the walls in general. One ofthe ear-liest examples for the Latin use of the term machina


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is found in Ennius (early 2nd century BC), and isalso evidence for this point of rcfetence: rnachinamalta minax minitatur mdxitnd mui\ a giantmachine that terribly threatens walls. City walls werethe focus of attention for these special machines,because for a long time thete were no weapons thatcould breach them; hence combined, complex

machines were needed that enabled an approach assecure as possible across moat systems and close tofonification rings with towers, as well as making itpossible to conquer or destroy the walls, even if itmeant taking them down stone by stone. Yet wenhere, similarly to the theater machines, it is not onlya matter of concrete technical machines penetratingthe walls, bringing them down or allowing them tobe overcome. Here too, rnachina afternates betweenthe material wall-breaker and the cunning that cir-cumvents the wall or makes it open by itself

In the 4th century AD, shortly before the periodthat is generally represented as the collapse of theRoman Empire, although that probably happenedmuch less as a break than is usually presumed, anauthor rvho remains anonymous wtote De rebrc bel'

,c* (DRB), a treatise for the counsel of the emperorin matters of war. In the late 19th century the textwas still called Dendrscluift eines verr0cken Pro.iekte-

machers ( Memorandum of a Mad Project-Maker,cf. Seeck), but people started qualifying the text as a serious work of military engineering' (Mazzarino)

64/AThousandMachines

and the alonymous author at least as a brilliantdilettante (Giardina). The text about matters ofwar is a social reform petition to t}le emperor inoffice, proposing reforms ofthe military in particularagainst the background of general, one could evensay moralizing statements about corruption, exualz-gance and overtaxation (economic elements of

rationalization predominate in this military policydiscourse of late antiquity, such as reduction of per-sonnel, reduction of service periods, limired taxexemptions for veterans, operation ofwar machinesby reduced personnel or avoiding the deploymentof troops and war machines altogerher with moreeconomical forms of occupation).'z

The main section ofthe text (chapters 6 -19 of 21altogether) consists ofa caralogue ofthe inventions ofwar machines with illustrations and brief commen-aries. From the text and the use ofthe terms inumtio

and, inamtainlate uttiquity, it is unclear whether the

2. The text of the treatise cgn be found in the Oxfod Text Archive

http://ota.ahds.ac.ulJ. Cf also the anicle on the anonltnous authorby SeeckjJa ?a y RzahntlkltpA*e I (1894),2325; SznroManatino,A:?etti tociak drl q afto secok: ficerche li ttoria tardn-rcm4n4, Ro$reillErma di Bretschneider 1951; Edward A.'fhompson, A RonanReformr and Imnnar, Oxford: G


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inventions are all or only partly new inventions, oreven inventions by the author-in the Praefurio hepoints out himself that he has "gathered togerherwerJthing useful fiom werywhere." A total of rwelvewar machines are presented here, which have suchintimidating names as Tichodifrus, Clipeocentrus,Currodrepanus or Thoracomachus, but also-the

more frequent variation in war machines-withanimal names: an entire zoology is to be found inthe writings of antiquity on warfare, including"rams," "mrtoises," "ram tortoises," "raven's beals"and "cranes,"

In the preface the author boasts of being able topresent not only an extremely hst q.pe of ship, bytodayt standards quite utopian, driven by oxentrotting in a circle on the ship and paddle wheels anda new, easily transportable hose bridge for crossinglarger rivers, He also invented a special device for

making a horse urge itselfon without any command,when breaking through a line or chasing a fugitive.^fhe cunodrepanus clipeatus (cf. DRB, XI$ is ahorse-machine for causing the greatest damage ro theenemy without human aid, in other words, even ifthe rider has been thrown off uerberibus spontaneis,'hutomatical$' whipping itself through the masses,this imaginary machine of a battle horse without arider corresponds to the inverse form of Kafkak riderwithout a horse. In Kafka's text ftagment "The ?ishto become an Indian," the rider sheds the spurs and

66/ ATholrsand Machires

then the reins, ffnally flying over the ground 'alreadywithout horset neck and horset head." In rhe inven-tion of the anonymous writer, the horse-machinewhips itselfon, instead ofa becoming-Indian, insteadof a machine of becoming-animal, the fantasy of arechnical-animal combar appararus,

Howwer, such imagined predecessors of todays

weapons and war technology, which have beenlargely realized in the dwelopment, for instarce, ofremote-controlled drones, should not mislead us toseparate the machines from their concarenationswith the invention as cunning. Already by the endof the lst century AD, in his work on the variousforms of stratagems, the Roman commander andsenator Frontinus had concentrated-conrary toour anonymous author-----on the immaterial. Since inFrontinus' opinion inventions in the area of wardwices had already reached their limits, in the rhird

book of his Stategernata he turned to tricks andstraragems thar could help to avoid or shorten anexpensive siege. He listed a total of eleven differentstratagems, including enticement to betrayal (briberyseemed to be the most economical procedure fortaking orrer cities), redirecting rivers and poisoningwater, terrorizing the besieged, and many more. Themosr invenrive variations of srratagems are in anycase tlose that involve deceiving the besieged. HereFrontinus lists primarily strategies of travesty:Hannibal was said to have taken many ciries in Italy


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by having his men adopt the Roman habitus andsending them ahead--disguised by langlage 6dclothing-as spies or the cwert avant-garde of theconquering troops. The Arcadians overpowered thetroops that were sent to aid the besieged, put on theiruniforms and thus took the city in the resu.ltant con-fusion. The Spartan fuistipp disguised his soldiers asmerchants, Epaminondas

ofThebes disguised

hisas

women to open the city gates to their armies.3Our anonymous authort war machines have a

surplus ofmateriality that reaches into the immaterial,

,iust as Frontinus' stratagems, on the orher hand, rarelyger by without materia.lity. The thesis of the ertensiveoverlapping of material and immaterial components ofthe war machine crystallizes in an exemplary form,however, in the most prominent myth of rhe \ armachine epic. The most famous exarnple ofa machinerhat decides and ends a war through curring is againa horse, but this time a wooden one. In V rgil's Amfithree lines before the famous verse, in which theTiojan priest laocoon eirpresses his reservations aboutthe gift from the Greeks pretending to depart,

3. Thc judgment of this bat chsic*r on trc pa:t of thc :ruthors of,ntiquiry oscillatcs becwcen dmiration for cunning behavior andcondcmnation of iffidious dcceit, rhe lancr oftcn combined widrhetorically reinforced pcjorative ellusions to the introduction ofgtoups such as merchans and 'women' that wre underltood rs

excluded from mascllinc vimrc.

68/ AT ousand Machines

quidryil id esa timeo Danaos ct dona ferentes, yr$Irefcrs to the Ti-ojan horse x machina: )ut baec in nls-trot fabricata est machina murcs (2,46). Virgil hasLaocoon warn that this machine is devised as-a trick gainst the walls ofTtoy, and this opens up the entirepalette of the war machine: from the stratagem of the fatalis machina e,237) , through whtch Oiysseusundermines the insurmounable city walls, to theconcrete waf, machine, the nachina belli (2,151),which does not even have to function

, * li_?re*r.in this case, but is broughr into the ciry bythe Trojans themselves. lt is not a coincidence tlatOdysseus, as a qpical machinator, is known not onlyas poljtropos and potjmetis, but also by the epithapolymlchanos, As the inventor of the tjnicalmachine and rhe psycho_social invenrion of theTi. ojan horse, he is literally both multiplying cun_ning and mastering many machines.

However, Odysszus, poly-mechanics also appearro inhere to the enemies of the Roman Empire,againsr which tle anonyrnous author of De )cb*sbellicis wrote his veatise. Impelled by his commercia.linterest, rhe aaonymous author proffered his colorfularray of more or less usefi.rl war machines to anequally anonymous emperor, who was in need ofthese inventio_ns ro mobilize imaginations against theoverflowing fanrasies of collapse in the impriumRomanum of late antiquity. The lifeswles

-ofrhe

'barbarian enemies of the Roman Empire ber*.en

War N/ach;nes / 69


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nomadic wandering and retreat into remote areas,their geographies between snow-covered mountainsand the desert proved to be so diverse thatvery dif-ferent inventions were required to ffght them(DRB, \ D. Contrary to the general culturalisticnotion of the correlation between Roman civiliza-tion and technical progress, of the direct propor-

tionality of Roman culture and military technologyon the one hand and the typical topoi of barbarianwildness, destructiveness and ferocity on the other,the anonymous author of De rebus bellich evenattributes to the barbarians ingenii magnitadt, themothef ofall virtues: inventiveness, renttn iwentio,also in terms of war machines, is by no means aliento rhem (DRB, Praefatio).

Aaon) rnoust barbarians, which are not speciffcallyidentiffed and thus spark the imagination all themore, come closer to the concept of the warmachine

in I Thousand Pkteaus not only in a vagueallusion to nomadologr, but also and especially in thisemphasis on their inventiveness . Nomadic inuentiostarts with the invention of technical machines, butgoes far beyond it. Nomads-and with this termDeleuze familiarly and paradoxically means espe-cially those who do not move from where theyare-not only invent war machines, they becoruewar machines, when they develop inventiveness as aspeciffc mode of action and subjectivation. Hereinvention means not only the invented device and

70l A Thousand Machines

invented stories, but beyond this the capability ofinventing new worlds. Along with and withinnomadic existence, fleeing, deserting the state appa-ratus, the inventiveness of the war machine evolvesnew forms of sociality, instituent practices and con-stituent power, the creation and actualization ofother, different possible worlds. Rather than seeing

r:he possible as a predetermined image of reality inone rJzgle possible world,, inuentio implies rhe differ-enriation of the possible into many different worlds,Counter to the identitary constitution of the oneworld of state apparatuses, it produces bifurcationsinto many worlds. \X./here a single possible world isdivided up in the logic of the state apparatuss, thesingularities of invention distribute themselvesamong differenr possible worlds.

Theater machines, war machines, these are notonly the two sffongest lines of the differentiation of

r\e mechan4/machina cor. cept, these rwo lines alsocofiespond to two of the main components of cur-rent social movements and the small revolutionarymachines afiiliated with thern. Contemporary strare-gies of inventive culning, of conflsion, of asltnmetryoftravesry whose genealogical lines include the poly-mechanic machinator Odysseus as well as themedieval ffgure of the jester, rhe tradition of theItalian politics of aunriduzione (the self-organizedreduction ofrent or the cost offood) in the 1970s, aswell as the practice ofthe communication guerillas of

War Machines / 7l


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the 1990s, also raise questions about the overlapping

between invention and imitation, of (intellectual)property, of the commons and of appropriation. The

forms of acrion used here are usually situated on the

boundary between legality and illegality, betweenplay and militant action, purposely blurring thisboundary. They are often actualized on the margiru

and within the framework of social movements, notonly constituting, but also sometimes problematizing

rhem and their organisarional forms.

For example, a group from Barcelona and Madridhas appeared since 2002 under the name Yomango,

carrying out these kinds of practices of appropriation

with performative and media strategies. In colloquialSpanish yo mango' means I shoplift, and what isshoplifted here is both material and immaterial at

the same time: on the one harrd, commodities are

appropriated in a playful, very concrete manner, but

on the other hand also and especially signs. In thename Yomango there is also a formal allusion to the

group's practice the appropriation of the name and

the logo ofthe Spanish transnational textile corpora-tion Mango exempliffes their program. Yomangoespecially likes to liberate products imprisoned bymultinational corporations as well as signs that end

up in captiviry due to rigid copyright policies'imprisoned less by authors than by globally operating

corporations. And just as these corporations sell not

only their commodities, but increasingly also their

72 / A Thousand N4ach nes

brands as lifestyle, Yomango celebrates shoplifting asa lifestyle.

Micropolitical practices such as those ofYomango, the Italian Chainworkers, the (Jmsonstcampaigns in Germany, the Hamburg Superhel*n,all groups that have played a certain role in the spreadof the Euromayday parades and rhe precariry move-ment, but also the Reclaim the Streets parties of theI 990s or the Clown Army of the anti-G8 summits inGleneagles and Heiligendamm: they all conjoin thecapability ofinvention as a war machine with perfor-mative practice as a theater machine,n But even themacropolitics of the global movement could bedescribed as a performative movement in rhegenealogy of theater machines. At the same time;many social movemenrs of the 1990s and 2000s arewar machines, because they invenr the dream andthe realitF of deserting the state apparatus. In other

words, they also problematize their own closure,structuralization and state-apparatization in Guamari,s

4. On Yomango see http://www.lomango.net; on the Chfiwo*en see:hap://www.chalnworkers.orgli on Umsonst se Anja Kanngiess,'Gestures of Everyday Raisance, hnp://eipcp.net/tranwersal/0307/

lamgiaer/eo on dre Superhelden see Efihimia Panagioddis The .cood

I,lcws' of Precarization, htrp://eipcpner/r nsvnayo3o7/panagioddis/o: on Reclaim dre Strees ard dre Clown tumy see John Joldan, .Nota

VhiJ* Valking on 'How o Bek the Hean of Empire,, hnp://eipcp.nedDnsrcIsaY1007/iorda.D/en.

War Machines / 73


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sense. In this way they rurn against the concretesates that are still powerful players in the constella-

tion of neoliberal globalization, but also-and this is

specfic and new at least in this extent and tlis vehe-mence-against the dwelopment of state apPaxanrses

withn thimselvesr against representationist forms'oginst the logic of the stage (which is the exactolooorite of *h"t is called here theatcr machine andp'.hr-".iu. -*".ent)' against rhe top and bonomof hierarchical striation, ainst the before and after

of avant-galde and masses.

'

l

74lAThousendMachines

5

MAYDAY MACHINES

MaXdzy is an aumnomoat ?tvce$ toda , a nctworh inuhlch mzny irrdioi&.dk axd difctcnt szbjectioitiesthmxghovt htrope zct: sunhrylmm thc contmlioionr

they acperiznce in theit difaext hcal coxtcrx, houatxdtel at all ioiud in the denzndfor a uztueral basicincort arrd in tulical practicer that att &famt fmmthotc of the rxions and Wt paftiet, Mayday * motcthan a vtics of'paradcs' ukhgphcc at tbc samc timc;it is a Plocett of the ftcompositiot and thc consti*tionofa ncu postfordis )rolztariat,

- Antonio Negri, Goodbc Mx Socnzlin

As is oftcn the case with the emergence and spreadof new terminology, the explosive expansion of theconceptual ffeld of precarity-p (ecarizarion-p re-cadat in recent yeai has resulted in considerableconfusion. It is therefore not surprising that in thecourse of the emergence of the social movement, forwhich this conccptual ffeld has bccome the mostimportant reference, the central terms have beendifferently valued again and again, and meanings


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diffuse social situation in all these areas produces alink between smooth forms ofself-precarization andrigidly repressive forms of labor discipline, newmodes of subjectivation are also becoming possible,distributed across the entire continuum, which canbe understood as emancipatory Yet if precarizationmeans not only social subjection and machinic

enslavement, but also forms of resistance againstauthoritarian labor regimes in the genealogy of1968-those still in existence and also new ones-then there is also litde point in speaking of"the pre-carized." Instead of the victimization expressed inthe use of the passive form, the term "the precarious"can be used more logically and more in keeping withthe ambivalent situation. Frorn this persPective, italso does not make much sense to employ the soci-ological term of "de-precarizing," which seems toimply too much hope in regaining the welfare state.

Finally, the palette ofthe phenomenon of ptecariza-tion extends far beyond the question of workingconditions: from the repeal ofguaranteed (and last-ing) employment to the expansion ofvarious formsof so-cailed "atypical employment'' (which hasmeanwhile become typical even for younger, white,male citizens in central and western Europe) andthe extension of working hours into the endlessexpanses of the terrain formerly calldd the privatesphere, the continuum of precarity reaches all theway to issues ofsocial security and the precarization

78l A Thousand Machines

of life from a bio-political and migration-politicalperspective, in the extreme case the precarizationof residence.'

V/hereas the conceptualization of precarization,precarity and precariat in movement-related dis-

_ courses becarne increasingly intense and dense, thediffusion into other fields was less productive.Debates about a "disassociared precariar" (abge-hdngtes Prehariat) led to a proliferation of termino-logical confusion in broad sections of the German-

l. On movement-related debates on preerization, see the a.rddes in theissue iprecariat" of the multillnguat eipc? wb jourul trr.nsae$al,hnp://eipcp.nedtranwenaV0T04, the Spnish and Iulian isue of theMaydry newspaper 'Milano-Barcelona Eum MayDay 004" published in

&rcelona and Milaa, tlre Precariry issve of $e Dlut:l\ GEapE?etMagazbe ftom 2n(4, $e special isue of the British Mze magazine widranicles on precarity published in the Mzre iscues 28 and 29 (20M105),

hnp://wmetamurc.org/en/Precarious-Reader. Individual uticles rele-

\ant to rhe aforementiond tines ofdiscoune include: Precariat a h futi-za "A&ift rhrouSh rhe Circuis of Feminized Precarious ' ifork,"

hcp://ipcp.net/tnnsversal0704/precarias 1i en; LaD, "The Precarirarion

of Culnrral Producers and the Mising 'cood Life,- hap:i/eipcpnet/transversal/0406/kpd/en; Angela Mitropoulos, "Precari-Us?,"http://eipcp.nt/tnnsvnal/0704/miaopoulos/en; Vassilis Tsianos/

Dimirds Papadopoulos, "Precarity. A Savage joumey into the Hean ofEmbodied Capitalism," hnp://eipcp.netJuanwersal/1106/tsimospa-

padopoulos/en; habell Lorey, "Gorernmenta.lity and Self-Precaiation "hap://eipcp.net/narwersaVl I 06/lorey/en.

lvlatday N,'la.irines / 79


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speaking mainstream press in fall,2006. A carelesslyformulated study had classiffed the 'Germans(excluding the population living in Germany withoutvoting rights) into nine politicd types, whereby the disassociated precariat was the ninth and last stageof this typology. The ensuing dcbate left out noplatitudes or reactionary resenrments, and had an

irnpact not only in the political field, but also fatbeyond it, reaching into academic and intellectualcontexts. The group idenriffed as the precariat wasnot only fixed to the rolc of object and victim: thedebate around the study went beyond this to con-struct a new quality of lumpen proletariat and irsexclusion from political agency.

Once dcscribed by Marx and Engels in theCommunist Manifesn as 'that passively rotting massthrown off by the lowest layers of the old society,the new, precarious lumpen prolemriat was now no

longer imagined ard described as only passive andpushed into precarity, but rather-particularlyinsidiously-as self-victimizing agents of their ownexclusion. The debate was no longer about exclusion-ary practices of the majority society, but rather onlyabout the purportedlyy'/r exclusion of those affected,about self-exclusion for which the excluded arcpresumably themselves responsible. The term precariatwas intertwined with a neoliberal, self-chosen loserexistence. There was no mention here of resistiyrrefusal, but rather of persons who must be subjedd

80 / A Thousand l,4achines

to increasing state control, since they obviously donot allow themselves to be neoliberally gou.rrr.j.

This continued discursive exclusion and thedenunciatory ffgure of imputed self-exclusion is anintentional and effective misunderstanding on the

. part o^fthe normalizing mainstream, a socio-politicalsrratiffcadon that the center of society needs to re-constitute itself. At the same dme, however, thediscursive dynamic surround.ing the,disassociatedprecariat can also be interpreted as an effect ofincreasing unresc as a necessitated defensive thatbecomes necessary in reaction to the emergence ofa new machine, a new monsrer. The name of themonster is precariaL its historical model and frictionsurface is the gianr prolerariat.

As it is used in everyday language, the term ,,pre_carious derives from the French prrralrr and meanslacking in security or stabiliry subject to chance orunknown conditions, [n Roman law, pre6a7i411v__ secured rhrough entreaty, ,,revocable, ,grantedsubject to repeal -was rhe concession of , ,i ght notbased on a legal claim. Especially in the contexts ofFrench social sciences, the term has becn usedincreasingly since rhe early l9g0s. Here, however,the bmad conventional sense, in which nearly arlthingcould be called precarious, was already constrainjto the precarization oflabor and thc term was disam_biguated as a negative deffnition, as an identificationbased on a lack. This line oftradition panly involved

Mayday Machines / gl


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l.

a one-sided emphasis on rhe negative effects ofemancipatory currents after 1968 that were directed

against authoritarian labor regimes and aimed at

self-determined working conditions. The struggles

of the 1970s sought to flee from patriarchal order,the factory regime and the subordinadon of life to

the fordist-patriarchal discipline of work. However'

the highly ambivalent connection between emanci-patory movements and the neoliberal restructudng

not only of the working world was only recognized

in its full complexity and differendally problema-tized in the late 1990s' Around the same time, the

conceptual limitation of precarity was opened inthe direction of bio-politics, social precarizationand precarious life. Especially the strands of post-Operaist, feminist and post-structuralist theoryinsist here on the muftal penetration of work and

life, the public and the private sphere, production

and reproduction, on a position that does not fallback behind the insights and achievements of thebreala of 1968 and the 1970s or even turns againstthem, and finally on the development of a concept

that uncovers the ambivalence in the precarious.As I attempt in the following to reconceptualize

the term precariat against this background, thisattempt is rooted less in an erymological or theoretical

genealogy, but rather in the development of theierminology within the movernent that has formedaround it in recent Years.

82 / A Thousand lvlach aes

During the preparations for the anti-G8 summitin Genoa in 2001, a group associated with themedia-activist collective Chainworke rs in Milanorganized a ffrst M ayday Parade. In the afternoon ofMay lst not many more than about 500 people tookup and dweloped the non-representationist demon-stration forms of the 1990s. Purposely situated notas a confrontation with the traditional May manifes-tations in the morning, Mayday escaped their cele-bration of labor with its different problematic con-notations. Vhile social democracy and unionsthroughout Europe still continue to engage in theirrituals on May 1st, still propagaring full employ-ment, while some green panies seek, on the otherhand, to creare a dichotomous counterweight to thiswith the ' day of the jobless on April 30th, the orderof employment and unemployment has long sinceabsconded and transformed itself; into a world, in

which not only emplol'rnent and unemplopnentbecome diffirsed in coundess in-between forms, butin which forms and strategies ofresistance have beenand are still to be invented.

Tying into the radical genealogy of Mayday sincethe Hayrnarket Riots in Chicago in 1886 and ofthelegendary US American union of the Wobblies, theInternational lforkers of the \(orld, fiom the startthe new tradition of May 1st has had an internationalorienration, seeking to problemarize precarization asa transnational phenomenon. The early development

I-,laydav l\4ach nes / 83


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Critical Mass joined in, quickly and effectivelywhen ir was a matter of occupying and reappropri-ating the street. As "apripista della mayday paradel'the swarm ofthe critical bicycle mass opened up thestage of the city.

As a consequence of transnationalization, in2004 a transformation of the Euromayday Parade

occurred with a first simultaneous organization inMilan and Barcelona. On the evening of May lst,2004, some ten thousard demonstrators marchedftom the central square ofthe university through thecity to the beach of Barceloneta; sans-papiers andmigranr, autonomous acriyists, polidcal activistsfiom left-wing and radical leftist unions and parties,ait activists, precarious and cognitive workers of a-llkinds, who werejust working on naming themselvesprcari@s. Like a moving and accelerated version ofthe practices of Reclaim the Streets, a stream of

dancing, chanting and painting people flowedthrough the inner city of Barcelona, The strcts tharthe demons$ators passed through were transformcdinto painted zones. Under the protection of thedemo, the city was dipped into an ocean of signs:political slogans, posters, stickers, references to websites, labeled pedestrian crossings, contextualizingwdl painting commented on here and there byperformative actions. The spread of creativiry thediffilsion of the artistic into the society of cognitivecapitdism, thus struck back once again: as the logos

86 / A Thousand Mach nes

1d disnlln of corporate capitalism that uniformlydistinguish inner cities are indebted to the creativiiof a multitude of cognitive workers, the creativityexercised in these jobs now spread oo, ^ - oppo-nenr over rhese logos and displays of rh" u.b* ,on.

. of . consumerism-over the display windows, cityIigha, rolling boards and LED screens as well as rhewalls of the buildings and the sneets. A mixture ofadbusring, cultural jamming and contemporarypolitical propaganda reigned as a generalization ofrhe stret arr of sprayers and taggers: an abstractmachine concatenating invention and perfomativity,war machine and theater machine, the assemblage ofsigns and the assemblage of bodies. And o.,re. Jl ofthis was a slogan expressing rhe continuum betweeninsecurity and fear in precarious livi

Documents

A Thousand Machines_Gerald Raunig