圍群 MONUMENT of APRON

祝本「圍群」女神節日快樂！

You had pointed towards the self-description of the Minor Compositions imprint (read original here) as a mode of reflection for our own manoeuvres, and I agree quite fitting. What if an attempt to reassemble a hydro-femme Display Distribute version of it?

Spinoza tells us there is only one substance, namely goddess or nature. From this we can logically conclude that Display Distribute, Shanzhai Lyric and LIGHT LOGISTICS are indeed part of a unified fabric of being — infrastructures along with subjectivities, embryonic fluid flowing with menstrual cycles and the entirety of a knitting circle choir. That, however, does not adequately describe the particular relation between different modes of becoming involved. The evaluation of compositional modes is one of history and time, which of course do not exist. It is as when Ettinger says that “I become m/Other”: Shanzhai Lyric and LIGHT LOGISTICS are both a part of Display Distribute and a becoming-other compositional mixture of Display Distribute that is not totally of it, that is the other to the self that is Display Distribute.

* Wasn’t that just a bunch of gobbledlygook? What do you mean by that? How does it practically work?
Perhaps. How does it work? Simply, by breaking down, like all forms of desiring machines. But that is probably not what you mean. So let us say more practically that within the realm of semi-autonomous cultural production there are zones of autonomy within the larger framework of imaginal production. These are points and processes of conjunction where Display Distribute is less a centralised location, but rather where different forces collaborate in ways that would not be possible without that framework. And if you look over the history of what Display Distribute has produced you will see these kinds of collaborations and joint projects taking place under the ‘umbrella’ or ‘coven’ of Display Distribute, from parasite projects with artists and the Wing Tat property model to the corporeal anarchist bookshelf, represented by various people in different settings. More recent joint projects include cooperations that have led to the “SECOND(hand)MOUNTAIN(fortress)” imprint, curatorial and editorial collaborations with common room for Shanzhai Lyric and participation and publishing with the Black Book Assembly. This is part of the shift from artist as singular producer to critical making as networked assemblage, as nodes in a longer process of composing.

Other questions that come up during this process:

• How to talk about the ethics of care within anarchism?
• What possibilities do we have to talk about the direction of the general coven amidst such decentralisation?
• If basic principles underlying the various limbs of activity bear ethical contradictions, what is the meaning of the whole?