Re: <nettime> a few thoughts prompted by Eyal Wesiman’s Ungrounding

[Thomas Keenan via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Thanks Ted. For broader access, this event will be broadcast live on Montez
Press Radio <https://radio.montezpress.com/#/show/4098>.


On Fri, Oct 30, 2026 at 10:51 AM GM - tedbyfield via nettime-l <
nettime-l@lists.nettime.org> wrote:

> Last night I saw Eyal Weizman speak at the New School in NYC. I know
> Eyal a bit, have spent *many* years working with close colleagues of his
> (from Goldsmiths, Forensic Architecture, and in that wider milieu), and
> have followed his work from as beginning as it gets in the US — his
> exhibition at Storefront for Art and Architecture back in 2003. Even so,
> I was completely blown away by his presentation — *completely*. All
> the more impressive because he he was visibly ill and sped through just
> one part of his new book. It was very strange to walk out with the sense
> that it’d be hard to think of any other talk that’s transformed
> *how* I think about a subject. What he said hardened my views, but not
> too much — they were pretty hard to begin with — and not in ways you
> might assume.
>
> To be specific: the way he approaches the subject finally crystalized an
> idea I’ve been nurturing for a while now — that what Israel is doing
> in the region (Gaza certainly, southern Lebanon TBD, Iran 🥶) should
> be seen as *worse* than genocide. Not because it’s “bigger” (it
> isn’t) or “more systematic” (it *is* in some ways) or “more
> evil” (whatever), but because it’s *different*. There are practical
> reasons for declaring it to be genocide — there are precedents and
> fora for prosecuting that crime — but, theoretically, calling it that
> way might also be a category error.
>
> Genocide as a concept didn’t spring fully formed from the head of
> Zeus; it’s a legal category that was articulated at a specific point
> in history to address what was then a new phenomenon and, as such, the
> concept was necessarily provisional. However, in the decades since WW2
> have seen technical advances — not just in overt technologies (e.g.,
> in surveillance and destructive capacity) but, equally important, in
> other conceptual and applied fields that have intensified this
> catastrophe (e.g., military strategy, operations research,
> urban/environmental planning, population control, agronomy, and so on).
> I’m well aware (probably far more than most) of the jaw-dropping
> extent of the Nazis’ ambitions, but those ambitions were as
> aspirational as the ridiculous figure of a  “Thousand Year Reich.”
> Today, ambitions on that scale are entirely practical — indeed,
> they’re within reach of a small country. Some of them are being
> implemented with a speed and intensity that would’ve left the Austrian
> Painter shaking his head in disbelief. Eyal’s book will be an
> important contribution to a wider understanding of what exactly is being
> implemented.
>
> The upshot: Theoretically speaking, I think we need to develop a new
> category, one that can encompass these advances’ density, complexity,
> and integration — and, most of all, the *ecocidal* aspect. And, in
> practice, an effort to articulate a new category could be a good
> opportunity to dissolve the Atlantic powers’ Old Boys’ Clubs that
> have dominated our juridical imagination for generations, and to form
> new new structures that reflect a profoundly different geopolitical
> world. Think of calls to expand the UN Security Council — but rather
> than tweaking existing institutions, create new ones founded on
> ecological thought in the broadest sense (think Gregory Bateson, Elinor
> Ostrom, or Achille Mbembe): diversities of people, cultures, relations,
> environments, juridical forms.
>
> That, I believe, is the challenge that the current resurgence of fascism
> around the world asks us to consider. I *detest* glib declarations like
> “[whatever] is broken” and “burn it all down” because, more than
> anything else, they reveal that the speaker is more interested in
> nihilism than in building collective resources. But it *is* true that we
> desperately need new categories, institutions, and procedures — so if
> fascists want to destroy the ones we have, then non-fascists should
> respond by creating new ones.
>
> (For netters in NYC, Eyal is giving another talk tonight (Fri 30 Oct) at
> Giorno Poetry Systems, 222 Bowery — home of William S Burroughs’s
> (in)famous “bunker,” if that’s your fancy. My advice: 👉🏼 RUN
> DON’T WALK. 👈🏼 RSVP needed — don’t wait. 👉🏼
> https://nyra.nyc/organizations/giorno-poetry-systems
>
> Cheers,
> Ted
> - -
> counter.ink / [in progress] viz.counter.ink
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