Wassim Z. Alsindi’s Residency at au JUS
April 11th to May 1st
au JUS has the pleasure of hosting Wassim Z. Alsindi in artistic residence.
Things happening in the frame of Wassim’s residency:
Meme Economies Conversation with Wassim Alsindi & the au JUS collective
Sunday, Apr 13th, 4pm
As the kick-off of his residency Alsindi will speak about money as simulacrum and the three-stage genealogy that leads to this “hypercapitalist, neoliberal moment” drawing upon Baudrillard and his work Symbolic Exchange and Death a.o.
Play session: Au Jus x 0xSalon
Tuesday, Apr 29th, 8pm
For this event, Au JUS and Wassim Alsindi from Berlin’s 0xSalon collaborate to present an ludo-pedagogical workshop, participatory discussion, and play session.
Guided by an evolving techno-esoteric cartomancy project (FAU0X SALON, ‘23-present), we will channel chance and dissonance into a conversation about Brussels' past, present, and possible futures through the chaotic and autonomous moderation of a deck of tarot-style oracular cards. We’ll also have time to play the full FAU0X SALON card game together, where participants adopt the personas of characters such as Rhizome Negarestani and The Xenofeminist, brainwashed by ideologies such as Acid Communism and Narcissist Realism, in order to explore discourses which could not take place any other way.
Lecture performance
THE CHAIN MAIL GAZE - Preview article on 0xFolklore
Date will follow.
Today, new forms of imperialism are emerging, led by a cabal of messianic technology elites who seek to remake our planet, its territorial divisions, and its populations. These would-be patriarchs wish to challenge the very foundation of the nation-state system through the creation of privatised zones of exception known as Network States. Through a psycho-political analysis of scarcity, chauvinism, and colonialism, this The Chain Mail Gaze links the Crusaders' lust for land, blood, and plunder to present-day colonial frontiers emerging through networked finance and technology.
What if the mediaeval Crusades never truly ended? Instead, what if the brutal campaign of conquest by Latin Christian zealots became the template upon which modern finance and the capitalist economy was modelled: a blueprint that reveals its true horror in our current age of tech-fascism? The Chain Mail Gaze posits that the libidinal forces within mediaeval Christendom, which fuelled militarised pilgrimages to the ‘Promised Land’ of Palestine in the late 11th century onwards, persist today, haunting contemporary politics and technology a thousand years later. The spectre of these forces manifests in the theatres of perpetual enmity that capital orchestrates, manipulating the occidental institutions of crown, church, college, and state to wage its battles. What lessons can be drawn from Athenian democracy and piratical governance to counter The Chain Mail Gaze of today’s captains of industry and their masculine (demi)urges?
Events hosted in the frame of Wassim’s residency:
Work presentation by Inte Gloerich
April 24th 6:30pm
Book presentation
The
Player and the Played: How Financialization Incubated 21st century Fascism
Pre-Release of Billionaires & Guillotines by Max Haiven
April 28th | 6pm
Game-Making-Workshop by Max Haiven
April 28th | 6pmAbout Wassim Z. Alsindi:
0xSalon is a collective-fiction which critically interrogates digital culture through discourse events and residencies, producing scholarly and creative interventions in the process. Since its founding in Berlin five years ago, we have been conducting an ongoing, non-profit experiment in knowledge sharing and collective (oc)cultural production. The 0xSalon researches topics, organises events, and authors lore, theory, poetry, music, games, theatre, and visual art. 0xsalon.pubpub.org
Alsindi is the creative director of 0xSalon, a counter-institutional collective critically engaging with technology through art and philosophy. His research practice is primarily concerned with the externalities of networked technologies. He holds a doctorate in experimental quantum physics, writes an editorial column at the MIT Computational Law Report and co-founded MIT’s Cryptoeconomic Systems journal. His recent writings have appeared in publications such as Spike Art Magazine, Weird Economies, 0xFolklore, In The Mesh, and the Philosophical Journal of Agorism, in addition to numerous creative works spanning experimental music, satirical theatre, speculative fiction, games, poetry, and machinic scripture. He has performed, lectured, and exhibited in over 30 countries, at venues including ZKM (DE), Unsound Festival (PL), Institute of Contemporary Arts (UK), Akademie der Künste (DE), CITY CITY Gallery (TH), Something Else (EG), and FIBER Festival (NL). wassim.xyz