In his letter to Ada Augusta Lovelace of July 2, 1843, Charles Babbage writes: “I like much the improved form of the Bernoulli Note but can judge of it better when I have the Diagram and Notation.” He is referring to the last in a set of notes written by Lovelace that interpreted the Analytical Engine, the first fully automatic and universal computer, invented by Babbage in 1834, although never actually completed during his lifetime. She appended these notes to her translation of an article written by Luigi Federico Menabrea after he had heard Babbage present a paper on the ...

Afghanistan: A Lexicon uses the form of a lexicon to present a nonlinear narrative of twentieth-century Afghan history as a recursive loop of modernization attempts, revolts, collapses, and recoveries.The lexicon covers seventy-one terms, most illustrated by archival and original images, including: vocabulary unique to Afghan politics, like bi-tarafi, jirga, and nizamnamah; terms that have specific meanings or resonances in the Afghan context, like “infidel,” “martyr,” and spetsnaz; key players and places, from Bacha-i-Saqqao to Hizb-i-Islami and from the Bala Hissar to the Microrayan; and special entries on recurrent events and themes that form the weft and warp of the century, ...

Dune was to be his most ambitious film production: a personal adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel of the same title, published in 1965. The science-fiction saga was ideally suited to the choreography of transgressive visual and narrative genres of the sort in which the method of Alejandro Jodorowsky (b. 1929 in Chile) partakes, and as it had been manifested in his films El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973). Such an important project merited its own blank book. Hence, the word “DUNE” written in Art Deco-style typography is on the cover of a thick yellow notebook from 1974. Inside, however, ...

It was a joyful moment when I rediscovered my old notebooks. I would not have searched for them without the dOCUMENTA (13) notebook publishing project. When reading these old notes now, I am surprised how many ideas they already contain and how they developed, building unconsciously one on the other. I had no memory of the level of detail in which some of these ideas had already been analyzed in the early notebooks. The books I found cover a three-year period beginning in late 1992. In my scientific life, this was a crucial time. It was the time when key steps ...

The globalized art world has been overtaken in recent decades by a true compulsion to archive—a compulsion that includes anything from academic research into preexisting archives or those still to be constructed, through exhibitions fully or in part based on them, to frantic competition among private collectors and museums in the acquisition of these new objects of desire. Without a doubt, this phenomenon is not the result of chance. In view of this, it is urgent that we problematize the politics of archiving, since there are many different ways of approaching those artistic practices that are being archived. Such politics should ...

What we know today as ‘the internet’ has historically been accompanied by a particular class of high-definition visions for its future. In this luminous world, a boundless 3D space, digital beings would interact through new forms of collectivity and partake in new modes of making, sharing, learning and trading. The idea of the metaverse—broadly defined as an always-online and persistent spatial virtual world—is being resurrected through a fundamental shift in digital infrastructure. This development includes the relatively recent advent of consumer-level technologies such as video game engines and immersive hardware, and is accelerated by a bearing within the games industry towards ...

What is printed in this notebook is film material, if not in the physical sense of celluloid, chemicals, video cassettes. For me, film material is everything that accumulates during a film project and accompanies it. That includes rejects or what was merely thought of and remained notes. Many things shape a film, not just the script but also the working environment and production processes, self-censorship and prohibitions. Certain of one’s aims remain unfulfilled, falling victim to constraints, or only in post production is the right tone found. The script is the working template for director, cameraman, and actors during shooting. Why was ...

It has often been noted that the collapse of the socialist system did not result in research activities that could be compared to postcolonial studies. As Ewa Thompson has observed, “Unlike Western colonies, which have increasingly talked back to their former masters, Russia’s colonies have by and large remained mute.” Instead, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, opinions have been expressed from within different research fields regarding the appropriateness of thinking of post-Soviet societies in terms of postcolonial studies. Nevertheless, asserting that postsocialism continues to remain a useful category for researchers, Caroline Humphrey notes the existence of a growing ...

He used to wake at about three in the morning and sing. Sing the lines over and over, until he remembered them, I guess. Paddy had put us two fellas together in the same camp out at Coconut Wells, in those early days, and Butcher Joe would get me to smuggle in a couple of cans of VB. We would smoke rollies and sip our warm beers in the tropical night, having a laugh. Then, well before dawn, that singing would half wake me. This was what was called his nurlu, coming through from his Aunty’s spirit. The pictures in this ...

Imagine living your life automatically; imagine that everything you do is like putting on your clothes—a combination of routine and basic thought that after many million repetitions now belongs to a realm located between reality and dream. Life is largely constituted of the continuous reperforming of single actions that share one trait in common: none of them is of true indifference to us, yet none really interests us. However, what is interesting is the weaving of these exercises of memory with potential invention— every morning we remember how to dress, how to make coffee, how to drink it from a ...

This publication introduces the exhibition documenta (13) in Kabul as well as documents the preliminary seminars that were held between 2010 and 2012. The four main positions around which dOCUMENTA (13) is articulated—Siege, Hope, Retreat, and Stage—correspond to four possible conditions in which artists and thinkers find themselves acting in the present. These positions are not comprehensive and acquire their significance through their mutual interrelation and resonance. Kabul and Bamiyan together constitute a crossroad of these conditions. Here, simultaneously with the state of hope, artists frequently experience the condition of being under siege, as well as that of withdrawal and ...

In the current social, environmental, and economic crisis, a search for alternative systems for every domain of life seems urgent. Many scientists and experts have formulated such alternatives, which now work as lighthouses for other projects that emulate them, joining in the collective effort for a more sustainable and equitable model of society. Among these systems are agroecological approaches such as permaculture—systems modeled on the structures found in nature and involving input from fields such as architecture, agriculture, and energy and waste management, in a holistic approach based on ecosystem dynamics and aiming for practical solutions for sustainable development. Professor George ...