with fanfare ep.2 – NXS Radio Echo

NXS is the product of the collective Goys & Birls, comprised of Juliette and Monika as well as Florian Mecklunburg and the conversation was recorded in advance of the first issue’s release, which is on the subject of Cyber Sensuality. The topic of cybernetics was not something I had considered for a while, but this was a good excuse to spend the week brushing up on things, mainly reading Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto and a few bits and pieces by Bruce Stirling. I was also given a few texts to read from the issue, namely those of Raf Rennie, Agnieszka Zimolag, Trudie Barber and Jack Self. When I refer to the issue in the following conversation, it’s these texts that I’m talking about.

Spotting keywords such as "ephemerality", "penetration" and "sadomasochism", what struck me most from these texts was their somewhat depressive capitalistic tone, quite understandable given the subject matter, but it reminded me of Mark Fisher’s discussion of Capitalist Realism, an ideological-aesthetic aspect of contemporary corporate capitalism in the West that suggests that capitalism is the natural order of things and that our behaviour should be understood and explained exclusively in accordance with this aspect. Fisher, who sadly died earlier this year, wrote extensively on his blog k-punk, and I would encourage everybody to delve into the blog for more on the idea of capitalist realism, for now this basic idea that we behave in every aspect of our lives according to capitalist ideology, should be seen as the main frame for my questions…