Social Discipline

Mattin and Miguel Prado sit down with friend of the pod and fellow NRU member Inigo Wilkins to dive into Shitshow Theory — a work-in-progress text by Mattin and Inigo — and Miguel's own take on what he calls Entropic Modernity. Together we try to make sense of the neo-reactionary turn, Trump-era chaos, and the cultural meltdown we're all living through. Theorising the shitshow, one glitch at a time.

Social Discipline is incredibly excited to present the adventurous life of Jeff Perkins, a hidden gem of the American underground. This massive five-hour podcast, recorded in Berlin in June 2024, explores his fascinating journey—no one else can claim to have performed for Yoko Ono and John Cage, created legendary light shows with The Velvet Underground, Sly and the Family Stone, and The Germs, programmed the first Kenneth Anger retrospective in L.A., and encountered both Charles Manson and members of the satanic cult The Process. Jeff joined the military in the 1960s and was stationed in Tokyo, where he met Yoko Ono in the early '60s. He began performing some of her pieces there and later in New York. Perkins also filmed Ono's classic Film No. 4 (Bottoms), a Fluxus work. His first independent contribution to the Fluxfilm Anthology was Shout. He was at the heart of the 1960s New York avant-garde scene, surrounded by figures like La Monte Young, Jack Smith, and Angus MacLise. In January 1967, Perkins moved to Los Angeles, where he worked as a programmer at Cinematheque 16. Influenced by Tony Conrad's The Flicker, he began producing powerful light shows and collaborated with bands throughout the '60s and '70s—ranging from The Jimi Hendrix Experience and The Grateful Dead to the punk scene with X and The Germs. He even refused to do a show for the Sex Pistols due to a disagreement with the promoter. Perkins was a close friend of Terry Jennings and, in fact, entrusted his archive to La Monte Young. While in L.A., he was neighbors with the artist James Turrell. In 1980, Perkins moved back to New York and started a loft project just a block away from Ground Zero, reminiscent of George Maciunas' artist loft spaces. To finance it, he worked as a cab driver. He remained deeply connected to cinema, particularly through Anthology Film Archives, where he proposed a John Cassavetes retrospective to Jonas Mekas and later became a manager. In 1994, Nam June Paik—who coined the term “The Fluxus cab driver” for Perkins—invited him to perform at Anthology Film Archives in a homage to Yoko Ono. His performance, Butthead, was a great success. His legendary loft became a hub where one could easily encounter visiting filmmakers like Pedro Costa and Albert Serra. In 1989, Perkins organized a series of lectures at Anthology Film Archives with Henry Flynt and Tony Conrad, reuniting the two after years of estrangement. Flynt would become a lifelong friend. In 2008, during the financial crisis, when I lived with Jeff, we organized a series of four-hour lectures by Flynt in the loft's kitchen, focusing on the crisis and communist economics. I vividly remember Tony Conrad attending one of them in his elegant pajamas. Perkins has directed two critically acclaimed films—one on abstract painter Sam Francis and another on the legendary Fluxus figure George Maciunas. He is currently finishing editing a film about Henry Flynt in Berlin. This podcast concludes with an excerpt from his piece Movies for the Blind, which features recordings of conversations with passengers from his time as a New York cab driver.

En este episodio, Sandro Brito, de la Cooperativa Cráter Invertido en Ciudad de México, nos introduce a la obra del marxista ecuatoriano Bolívar Echeverría y su biografía heterodoxa y fascinante. Como nos comenta Sandro, Echeverría, influenciado por el existencialismo de Unamuno, comenzó a interesarse en Sartre y Heidegger. Además, formó parte del grupo artístico Cortadores de Cabezas. En 1961, viajó a Friburgo con la intención de conocer a Heidegger, pero este lo rechazó por no saber alemán. Entonces se trasladó a Berlín, donde acabó en la Freie Universität, donde conoció a Rudi Dutschke. En esos años, Berlín era un hervidero radical donde las lecturas del marxismo subterráneo de Korsch y Lukács se combinaban con talleres de lectura de El capital fuera de la universidad. Era la época de Dieter Kunzelmann, Kommune 1, Spur, Hans-Jürgen Krahl, Subversive Aktion y su publicación Anschlag. En 1968, Echeverría llegó a Ciudad de México, un lugar de exilio para muchos radicales marxistas. En esos años, el marxismo en América Latina vivía un gran auge, con figuras como Óscar del Barco y José Aricó en Córdoba, Argentina. También destacaban casas editoriales como Siglo XXI, Casa de las Américas, Pensamiento Crítico, Biblioteca del Pensamiento Socialista y la Fundación Era. En 1974, comenzó la publicación de Cuadernos Políticos, donde Echeverría publicó sus primeros textos. Hablamos también de su concepción de la enajenación y su interpretación del fetichismo de la mercancía, el trabajo y el valor de uso, y cómo estos pueden ser comprendidos más allá del capital. Acabamos con su concepción de la modernidad y lo que el llama ethos barroco. Esta conversación tiene como trasfondo sonoro mezclas de Sandro, quien también es DJ como Emiliano Dietzgen.

Join us for an euphoric episode with our very good friends of the pod, Amy Ireland and Maya B. Kronic. Inspired by their work on Cute Accelerationism this episode explores the multiple dimensions of contemporary cuteness. From its sensory and cultural impacts to its erotic and semiotic layers, we unravel how Cute opens a gate to the transcendental process of acceleration itself.

Para el presente episodio, hemos tenido el privilegio de conversar con Manuel Borja-Villel, cuya dirección en el Museo Reina Sofía ha marcado un antes y un después en el enfoque museístico moderno. Hablamos de las constantes guerras culturales que enfrenta el arte contemporáneo, del concepto de Cora, discutimos su reciente participación en la Bienal de São Paulo y las audaces propuestas que presentó para Documenta.

In this episode of Social Discipline, we're joined by the renowned philosopher and complexity scientist, Alicia Juarrero. Alicia delves into the intricate world of causality in complex systems, offering insights from her seminal work, Dynamics in Action and Context Changes Everything. Throughout our conversation, she unpacks the principles of complexity and their implications for understanding human behavior and decision-making processes. We also explore how her theories challenge traditional views of causality and control in both social and natural sciences. Additionally, Alicia shares her thoughts on the ethical dimensions of complexity, particularly how they relate to issues of freedom and responsibility in contemporary society.

In this cultural biography from the incendiary and radical poet and thinker Howard Slater (Break/Flow), we speak about far-left culture in Britain since the 1970s and its relationship to politics and poetry. Slater started the legendary Break/Flow zine in the 90s and participated in the Virtual Future conference. In the 2000s, he began the eclectic label Difficult Fun with others. In the early 2010s, he was part of developing MayDay Rooms, a fantastic archive and resource for social movements and marginal cultures based in London. Slater is currently translating Jacques Camatte and working on his poetry. This podcast includes previously unreleased poetry from Slater.

In this episode, we speak with artist Marwa Arsanios about her practice, documenta fifteen, feminism, and the possibility of reshaping the political potential of art. She talks to us about her ongoing project, Who Is Afraid of Ideology?, which Arsanios did as part of documenta fifteen. In this project, she explores through collaboration the possibility of communizing land and its practical, legal, and geological connotations. Furthermore, we discuss the aftermath of documenta fifteen and its problems. We also get to know  about the origins of the title and the ideological differences in regards to feminism in Beirut in the last decade.

Conversation with artist, writer and curator Hamja Ahsan on the support campaign he organized for his brother Syed Talha Ahsan, his groundbreaking book Shy Radicals, his project at documenta fifteen and the hate campaign that he is receiving from some of the German media. Hamja talks openly about mental heath issues, islamophobia and the crucial support that he got from Anne Tallentire while he was studying at Central Saint Martins.

Miguel Prado and fellow Guild navigator (and co-host for today's episode) Sonia de Jager meet Diana Walsh Pasulka: professor of philosophy and religion at UNCW and author of American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, and Technology. We discuss what do we mean by agnostic when we want to be challenged by new knowledge, the UFO phenomena as a new form of religion, recent congress' public hearing into "unidentified aerial phenomena'', how ancient aliens could have handed technology to humanity and much more! Cover image by NonayahBiz https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/w92937/i_told_ai_starryai_to_show_me_the_moment_ancient/

We had the great pleasure of being joined by Jeffrey J. Kripal in conversation about how to lift the veil of Isis, the radical collapse of the subject-object structure, paranormal research, LaMBDA alleged consciousness, conspirituality, Esalen Institute and its impact on American culture and many other liminal topics. Jeffrey Kripal is J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University and is the associate director of the Center for Theory and Research at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. He is the author of eight books, including: The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge (2019), Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred (2010) and Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion (2007)–all mentioned in this episode.

Crypto collapse! Simply HODL and stay with us while we talk with Wassim Z. Alsindi: veteran of the timechain, founder and host of the 0x Salon, conducting experiments in post-disciplinary collective knowledge practices. Wassim specialises in conceptual design and philosophy of peer-to-peer systems. Today he guides us through the speculative hellscape. Some resources: (blockchain-time) Reminiscences of a Clock Operator https://0xsalon.pubpub.org/pub/jmysxacr/ (nfts/digital art) The Revolution Will Not Be Tokenised https://0xsalon.pubpub.org/pub/nl45krtx/ (bitcoin indeterminacy) Bitcointingency https://weirdeconomies.com/contributions/bitcointingency (on memes) https://spectrumstore.com/en/memetic-counterculture-starter-pack (on daos) DAOcolonisation 0x Salon Audio Report https://0xsalon.pubpub.org/pub/fbeqr4q3/release/1?readingCollection=a777270b Music by essential abstractions

This week, we had the great pleasure of being joined by Elvia Wilk, writer and editor, author of Oval (2019) and Death by Landscape, a collection of essays forthcoming this July from Soft Skull Press. We talked about her new book, the pandemic, plants, the weird, LARP, the Web 3.0 and post-nuclear religious fiction!!! Errata corrige: 29:30 Yes, plants do release more oxygen than carbon dioxide

We had the great pleasure of being joined by Matana Roberts, multidisciplinary artist, saxophonist, composer, and sound adventurer. We talked about the unequal mental health toll of the pandemic, the healing power of live music, their Coin Coin work and many other things!

We are back with Brazilian philosophers Gabriel Tupinamba and J.P. Caron from Círculo de Estudos da Idéia e da Ideologia, an institution with the task of investigating the political thought and collective organizational practices called for by the return of the communist hypothesis. They give us a primer on the institution and their meta-structural organizational practices. 4 sound pieces made out of the CSII archive of recordings. One per individual. J.P. piece was composed and mixed by himself, text: Gabriel Tupinambá- Freeing thought from thinkers, mastered by Sanannda Acacia.

We are back with Pan Dajing. We talk her work(that we love!), about solitude, crypticism, intimate "connection at a distance" and many other digressions into the emotional core of our "spiritual fluid".

We welcome philosopher and social scientist Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm, author of The Invention of Religion in Japan (2012), The Myth of Disenchantment (2017) and Metamodernism (2021). Among many other things, we talk about his work, modernity and its alleged departure from the supernatural, Mark Zuckerberg completely misreading Snow Crash, and how philosophy help us to live a live that it is worth living.

We had the great pleasure of being joined by majuscule music journalist and author Simon Reynolds. In times of "Shock and Awe" we discuss the legacy of CCRU and Mark Fisher(and its neo-reactionary co-option), depressive hedonism and the attention economy, if there are any subversive attributes left to be found in subcultures... and among many other things, we share what still gives us a kick in music nowadays!

We are back with Jules Joanne Gleeson, writer, comedian and historian, recently co-editor of the collection: Transgender Marxism, published by Pluto Press in 2021. A groundbreaking synthesis of transgender studies and Marxist theory. We talked about gender and family abolitionism, her writing, industrial music, stand-up comedy and many other things!

Arrancamos un nuevo año con Mario Aguiriano(del podcast Café Marx) y Kolitza. Hablamos sobre la crisis, el comunismo, la pandemia, Marx, las limitaciones de la sociodemocracia y una presentación breve del movimiento GKS (gazte koordinadora sozialista). Música de J.Martina, Harrga y Mattin

A very personal conversation with artist and musician Tim Goldie about his involvement in Eddie Prévost's workshop, the London's music scene in the 2000's, his long engagement with anti-fascism and his overcoming of rough times.

Back with Claire Rousay for our horniest episode as of now. Squaring the circle of honesty and parrhesia led us to develop the novel "Theory of the Conflation of Sex, Love and Free Improvisation". Should you ask for consent before penetrating an auditory canal? A sonorous polycule. NSFW!

We had the great pleasure of being joined by techno-animist and Turner Prize-winning artist Mark Leckey. We discuss UK Bikelife; commodity fetishism and how trainers and fashion are tokens of class with magic-like attributes; the repertory of spells the left still has against KeK's Meme Magic; TechGnosis and conspiritualism in the age of Elon Musk. AND Lana Del Rey's White Dress! You won't miss this!

We welcome cultural theorist and philosopher Sami Khatib to clarify some basic (but very slippery) Marxist terms that help us to discuss the present time as well as the crazy few weeks of NFTs drama. Triple Shot Espresso of Marxism for the gang out there.

Friend of the pod Rosemary joins us to talk about the current state of anarcho-Stalinism in the U.K, the post-Corbyn Labour landscape, the activities of MayDay rooms archive, the seminal text ‘In and Against the State,' and many other communist things! https://maydayrooms.org/in-and-against-the-state/

Cuidado! Volvemos en español con el Eldon Tyrell del Meta: Miguel Noguera. Charlamos extensamente de lo que verdaderamente importa: la seducción por el lado oscuro del Aceleracionismo; Iker Jiménez, Coast to Coast y otros pesebres de la conspiración; su maravilloso podcast Infrashow; la terapia Gestalt; crisis de la masculinidad; visiones Lynchianas de Rosalía y Cañita Braba... haha Gesualdo's wife's burofax go brrr... Eso. Oro puro, NO! Bitcoin puro.

Arrancamos un nuevo año con

We are back with Slovene philosopher Samo Tomšič, author of The Capitalist Unconscious: Marx and Lacan (2013) and more recently, The Labour of Enjoyment: Towards a Critique of Libidinal Economy (2020. We talk about allergic reactions to left-accelerationism, how constitutive alienation works, populism and the right wing programme etc. Borusiade is vibing in the background.

En este episodio contamos con el lujo de estar acompañados por la leyenda viva del arte de acción en el estado español: Esther Ferrer. Conversamos acerca de su visión del anarquismo, Max Stirner, los encuentros de Pamplona, paseos covidianos furtivos... y todo con el regalo adicional de una serie de piezas sonoras de Esther(de nada fácil acceso), que muy generosamente ha compartido para su difusión en este podcast. La propia Esther os deja unas palabras de cada una de estas obras (por orden de reproducción): Suspiros de España - 1981 Es una obra que realice para un disco que un editor italiano quería hacer con obras ZAJ. Cuando estaba pensando qué hacer, ocurrió lo de Tejero y decidí hacer una obra sobre el tema. Pedí una grabación a una radio de SS e hice este montaje sobre la España carpetobetónica que creemos que ha desaparecido pero no, la prueba. Los suspiros son míos pero la canción ya la conoces es la españolada típica. 18 Julio del año 2000 Cuando ocurrió este dramático hecho, te acuerdas emigrantes chinos encontrados muertos en un remolque frigorífico abandonado en la aduana, me horrorizó, senti la imperiosa necesidad de hacer algo para protestar, no puede consentirse algo así. Y escribí este texto. Coincidió que estaba invitada a un Festival de poesía y lo leí, al menos toda la gente que estaba presente salieron del recital sabiendo que esto había pasado en nuestra Europa democrática y defensora de los derechos humanos!!! TATETITOTU - 1994 El origen es una performance a realizar live. Se trata de un grupo de personas que se pasean por una ciudad diciendo como una letanía: TATETITOTU, era para presentar en un Festival en Italia de obras radiofónicas pero que querían integrar a la radio el aspecto performativo y José Iges que era uno de los organizadores me pidió si podía hacer una obra performática retransmisible. La gente estaría en la sala de la radio escuchando la acción live transmitida en directo. Pero el Festival se suspendió y José Iges, me dijo Esther por qué no la hacemos como obra radiofónica clásica. Y la hicimos montándola en el estudio. Años más tarde tuve la suerte de poderla hacer live en Suiza y que una emisora de radio, facilitara un acompañante que grababa y cada x tiempo se conectaba con la radio y los auditores oían 1 minuto de la performance que ocurría en plazas, calles, grandes almacenes, iglesias, cafés, incluso en el barco que atravesaba el río. Empezamos en un centro cultural, donde en una sala la gente podía escuchar la perf. live o venir con nosotros. Espectáculo Es una poesía sonora, la palabra espectáculo, comprende la palabra « culo » y todo espectáculo es un poco exhibicionista, bueno pues una variación de la palabra con muchos de los sufijos que se pueden encontrar en el diccionario. Al ritmo del tiempo - 1992 Es una obra sobre el tiempo, un montaje hecho en estudio con todas mis bandas sonoras que durante años he empleado en mis performances ni mas ni menos. José Iges que la produjo me dijo que cuando la transmitieron la gente llamaba a la radio indignada, aunque algunos, pocos, decían que era genial. Luego la han pasado al parecer muchas veces sin problemas. --- Desde Social Discipline queremos agradecer a Josu Rekalde y recomendamos su nueva película sobre Esther Ferrer: Los Hilos del Tiempo http://josurekalde.com/obra/esther-ferrer-hilos-de-tiempo/

This week we are joined by François J. Bonnet, recording artist (as Kassel Jaeger) and theoretician, Director of Groupe de Recherches Musicales of the National Audiovisual Institute (INA-GRM) in Paris, and producer on National French Radio France Musique. We talk with him about the recent publication of the english translation of his book "After Death" (2020, Urbanomic)in the context of the current pandemic and the general externalisation and disembodiment of death. We do end up divagating about improvisation, the sublime, romanticism and other meta-musical tropes in the direction of François' most recent book "The Music To Come" (2020, Shelter Press). https://www.urbanomic.com/book/after-death/ https://shelterpress.bandcamp.com/merch/fran-ois-j-bonnet-the-music-to-come-english-edition

Deep fried new pod with Covid survivor Martti Kalliala, co-founder of nemesis.global and 1/2 of Amnesia Scanner. He told us about his descent into the spiky fuzz-ball world and we discuss two of Nemesis's most recent memos: The Umami Theory of Value and their GPT-3-laden: The DOOM! Report. https://nemesis.global/memos/umami https://nemesis.global/memos/the-doom-report

We are back! Double shot of communisation. We are joined by Rob Lucas (Endnotes), we discuss his critique of Zuboff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism and his magnific text Error. Be aware of the conditions of possibility of a communist overcoming of the capitalist mode of production! Rob's critique of Zuboff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: https://newleftreview.org/issues/II121/articles/rob-lucas-the-surveillance-business Error https://endnotes.org.uk/file_hosting/EN5_Error.pdf

We are back with original Xenofeminist Patricia Reed and speculative computer scientist Anil Bawa-Cavia to discuss their text 'Site as Procedure as Interaction'. We confront (with optimism? openness?) this second wave of abject worldings from the poor grasp of reality of GPT-3 to the U.K. outcry with A-levels algorithm debacle. Sonification of Anil courtesy of Roc Jiménez de Cisneros a.k.a EVOL Sonification of Patricia courtesy of Katrina Burch. Yoneda Lemma (a.k.a. You Need a Lemon, sometimes Yoni Dilemma) Mattin and Miguel do their thing. Read Patricia and Anil text (among many other friends of the pod) buying "Construction Site for Possible Worlds", published by Urbanomic in Sept 2020. https://www.urbanomic.com/book/construction-site-possible-worlds/

Mattin and Miguel Prado talk with uncompromising art-theory-mavericks: Ana Teixeira Pinto and Kerstin Stakemeier about their crucial text: "A Brief Glossary of Social Sadism". More relevant than ever in these times of generalised brutality. Artwork: Parker Bright, "Confronting My Own Possible Death", 2018.

We are back with DeForrest Brown, Jr. | Speaker Music. We talked about the East Village in the age of COVID, DeForrest's forthcoming book: "Assembling a Black Counter Culture" in light of the killing of George Floyd and the BLM demonstrations all over the world. Discussion ends touching never released Final Fantasies, moving from Alabama to Manhattan and how America, basically is a scam. As usual, in-house counter-police enforcement beats mixed with some classics from Detroit and a final gem by our guest with Kepla.

NOW! back online! Our episode with Asia Bazdyrieva & Solveig Suess from Geocinema. We discuss the relevance of their project (considering planetary-scale sensory networks as a vastly distributed cinematic apparatus)for the moment we are living and the future to come. Score by Jessika Khazrik.

This week we are joined by Alex Williams, co-author of #ACCELERATE MANIFESTO for an Accelerationist Politics, "Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work". We discussed Boogaloo Bois latest fashion trends, the coming of the Big Igloo, what's the role of the Dirtbag left within the hegemonic discourse, and the electoral prognosis and transformation of contemporary socialism. All this in light of Alex's most recent book "Political Hegemony and Social Complexity. Mechanisms of Power After Gramsci" (2019).

This week Miguel Prado and Mattin talk with Mat Dryhurst: interdependent polymath from the Solarpunk intelligentsia. We discuss the pandemic effects of music streaming platforms, the difficult balance between pragmatic and normative approaches, and the Russian doll-hell that is twitter.

We are joined by Elena Biserna: researcher and curator based in Marseille. We talked about skin starvation, feminist cross-border actions and participating in the Holy Mass via Jitsi. Sonic contributions by Elena and Loreto Martinez Troncoso. Reggaeton queen bees accompanied us.

Friends of the Pod: Sonia de Jager and Martina Raponi join us to talk about miasmatic-fractal-Trump as a dark corona that is eating into us and the lack of new forms of oppression. Sonic contributions by Martina and Kostis Kylimis, music selection by Sonia and grinded by us during the pod.

We talk with Fielding Hope senior producer at experimental music Mecca Cafe OTO in London and co-curator of Counterflows, a Festival for Underground, Experimental and International music. .

Mattin and Miguel Prado talk to noise scholars Cecile Malaspina and Inigo Wilkins about the collective need of counter-bunker techniques, noise in view of Carnap's theory of probability1 and 'whack' swans. Special guest Dali De Saint Paul provides vocals and readings for our house beats and noise.

Miguel Prado, Mattin and Reza Negarestani continue the conversation in this unprecedented moments demarcated by COVID–19: Wire-guided torpedoes, conspiracy theories, the great plague London, the human sloth with an endnote from Gottfried Ben. New paradigmatic times sonified and musicalised by Mattin and Miguel Prado

SD02 – w/ Reza Negarestani – Synthesis Between "Manichean" and "Augustinian" devils: Part 1 by Social Discipline

Mattin & Miguel Prado thinking aloud about the current events regarding CODIV-19 while making sense of history as it happens. They let the unconscious improvise in this absolutely unexpected present, trying to render actual a no longer distant future