class .04

"the brain is a meat machine" - reflection on lutz dammbeck's "the net"
30.09.2009

my analysis is based on a deconstruction of the documentary in three main parts:

what are the different kinds of net in "the net"?


kaczynski's self-image:

- rambo-topos
---- a lonesome warrior in the woods fighting the whole world
---- comes in multiple episodes
---- the standard plot of an american action movie
---- the seer, the only one that sees clearly --> cassandra-myth
---- the savior
---- conflict between state and individual, both radically interpreted
---- trained by the state, state created expert, is abandoned, then individual turns on the state

- thoreau + counterculture topoi
---- K. as a radical, but also archetypical character of these times
---- in reflection: being the fly caught in the (inter)net as an icon



the film, dammbeck's approach, the structure:

- art documentary, subjective paths, dammbeck spinning his own net/web with this docu
- kaczynski as a starting point
- k's starting point as the artist lutz dammbeck's starting point
---- thriving from one association to the next
---- scribble as an indication for this --> storyboard for the film, dammbeck+film travel from one hint to the next
- modular montage as well as remix of old visuals with audio for his present as further indicators
- a puzzle, that in the end leaves the author puzzled as well as the audience
- kaczynski as a layer, but not the topic; as a parenthesis for reflection on technotopias (positive and negative) and their various aspects and histories and deliberately blanked out spots as well as forgotten connections; the unspeakable, what are the last taboos left today?
- dammbeck not supporting kaczynski, but trying to understand
---- critique of his film --> compare to hannah arendt's reportage for the newyorker of the eichmann trial in jerusalem --> “the banality of evil” --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem
- navigation through film like navigating through hyperlinks --> vannevar bush
- net = web = spiderweb, who is the spider, who is trapped



the net of histories:

- of technological developments and their connections, especially:
---- of how they create and structure society
---------- state: superpowers; stronger, better, faster; predominance and superiority, creating fear
---------- from k.'s view: the oppressive perspectives, suffering from fear
---- of how they could as well -''- different societies
---------- counterculture: liberating effects

- of social experiments:
---- state, state institutions intruding into people's minds; domination
---- search for private alternatives to modern society; liberation
---- on the individual basis of k.: of how the state which he later on fights against creates his state of paranoia, his conflicts, uses him as a test rabbit

- of personal connections:
- success-stories: the people who are interviewed, that can be seen
- being in- or outside of the net = society:
---- self-chosen, voluntarily
---------- liberating --> in --> see success-stories
---------- necessary escape --> out
---- pushed out of society:
---------- ascribed/created/real mental illness
- net vs individual
- inner logics of systems (individual people, communities, state, machines) and closed systems



assignment:
read chapter 4 of Gene Youngblood's "Expanded Cinema":
http://prehysteries.blogspot.com/2008/09/gene-younfblood-expanded-cinema-full.html
or:
http://www.vasulka.org/Kitchen/PDF_ExpandedCinema/part4.pdf