4 documents
# 49
The Insurgents, Part II: Fighting the Left by Being the Left
Nato Thompson
I have to thank Rijin Sahakian for a reasonable rebuttal to the first half of my essay. It is certainly unreasonable for me as someone who resides in the United States to gloss over the violence and destruction of the Iraq War. It was not my intention to say that the efforts of COIN were in fact effective in actually “protecting the population,” but instead to point out a methodology of social relationships that worked in tandem with violence. I have no desire to be a provocateur in regards…
e-flux Journal
Posted: November 1, 2013
Category
War & Conflict
Subjects
Socially Engaged Art, Militarization, Academia, USA, Middle East
# 47
The Insurgents, Part I: Community-Based Practice as Military Methodology
Nato Thompson
This is a story about counterinsurgency as well as community organizing. It is a story about getting to know people as an occupying force, and getting to know people as neighbors. It is a story, ultimately, about the military entering the terrain of that thing called culture. This story has fascinating, hardworking protagonists such as General David Petraeus, socially engaged artists like Suzanne Lacy, and anthropologists-turned-military-consultants like Montgomery “Mitzy” McFate. It is…
e-flux Journal
Posted: September 1, 2013
Category
War & Conflict
Subjects
Black Power, Community, Socially Engaged Art, Militarization
# 37
The Last Pictures: Interview with Trevor Paglen
Nato Thompson
In 1963 NASA launched the first communications satellite, Syncom 2, into a geosynchronous orbit over the Atlantic Ocean. Since then, humans have slowly and methodically added to this space-based communications infrastructure. Currently, more than 800 spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit form a man-made ring of satellites around Earth at an altitude of 36,000 kilometers. Most of these spacecraft powered down long ago, yet continue to float aimlessly around the planet. Geostationary satellites…
e-flux Journal
Posted: September 1, 2012
Category
Photography, Surveillance & Privacy, Interviews & Conversations
Subjects
Outer Space
# 20
Contractions of Time: On Social Practice from a Temporal Perspective
Nato Thompson
Many can relate to a sense of disembodied franticness that expands across the landscape of our daily lives. We are busy people. We are plugged in to phones and computers, and constantly on the move. An elusive horizon—the purpose of our quicksilver existence—has been erased in favor of a go-to emotional state that is the result of a privatization of time. We are frantic workers even when we work against the very conditions that produce our franticness.
In his incisive book Capitalist…
e-flux Journal
Posted: November 1, 2010
Category
Capitalism, Contemporary Art, Performance
Subjects
Socially Engaged Art, Temporality, Relational Aesthetics, Housing & Real Estate