The collection and analysis of data, has rapidly changed the way economies operate. The emerging order, within this globally connected society based on rapid information exchange, begins to reveal a new form of capitalism - surveillance capitalism. Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft (the big 5) now dominate the majority of the internet. Shoshana Zuboff's book 'Surveillance Capitalism' is a dark and veritable discourse, about the deep colonization of our private lives, our behavior serving the emerging economies, mandated by the super-corporations, who have subverted laws, safety, even democracy, morals and privacy.

Cited by the New Yorker as part of "100 most important books" in 2019, Zuboff's decade long research reveals the making of limitless digital frontiers and the rise of Surveillance Capitalism. The mapping of our daily lives as 'Surplus Behavioral Data'. Zuboff demystifies the lofty initial promises of the internet, which were rapidly sequestered by the Silicon Valley, big corporations, the state and public institutions. That Metaverse, AI, Chat GPT, Smart Homes etc are not just dazzling new frontiers aimed at the public, but contrary, comparable to an "unilateral claiming" (colonization) of private human experience.

 

Our Surplus - The Behavioral Data
A data scientist commented the other day, “the underlying norm of all software, browsers and apps designed now is data collection...in what way one uses the data depends on the business objectives...”. 'Google Classroom' is just one example, of how systems can be written specifically to target children. New Mexico attorney general filed a class-action suit against Google in 2022, citing its "...various illegal data extraction practices". At the back end of Chrome and Android, an app called Trojan is collecting physical locations, search histories, of children as young as 12 years old. Trojan is grabbing our YouTube viewing habits, contact lists, passwords, indications, voice recordings etc. Yes indeed Google has agreed to set up "a privacy and online safety initiative specifically for children", however it's previous record and interventions have been totally contrary to what it's principle operative is all about - extracting Surplus Behavioral Data (SBD). "It’s common to find all sorts of malware lurking under what seem to be harmless apps on the official Google Play store...there are hundreds of apps, mostly free, which may contain Harly Trojan that scrubs through personal data on mobile phones..." states Kaspersky (leading anti-virus company). Google's big share of revenues, worth around $163 billion in 2022, shows how fundamental SBD is to it's global domination. As every form of colonization is dependent on raw material and a yet to be colonized community, so is the case with SBD. Google serving targeted ads, while constantly amplifying it's search products / services. Hence our SBD is what Google collects and dispenses to advertisers, as qualified traffic. Indeed, it's a bit preposterous to imagine the size of this dragnet, our collective SBD approximately equates to 4.62 billion transactions per day (statista.com 2023)


Similar to General Motors, Ford and Toyota as the "petri dishes" of the new forms of Capitalism in the 20th century, Google is a "humongous progeny of sorts", a century later. The analysis then reveals Google as the limitless, if not eventual repository (of decades and centuries) of scholarly, journalistic, theoretical, experiential, visual, audible etc record of not only humanity, but the entire planet itself. As Zuboff explains "creating an ever-growing supply of raw material (more and more behavioral data) as well as generating more real-estate for this data to be put to use (more and more advertising surfaces)...Google controls both ends of the system, and therefore instituted a systematic approach to making money online: Surveillance Capitalism. In this system, accumulation of data is key! And that accumulation is personalized... it's about each one of us at the generating and receiving end, while the revenues are mandated by external capitalist forces..."

Privacy!? What's the big deal?
“Do people care about privacy?” asks Lauren Jackson (NYT 2022). It’s important, but where do we even start? At the beginning of it all, we have allowed Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, Instagram, Twitter, Tik-Tok etc to build huge asymmetries of knowledge, about our society, about people and about our daily lives. Instead of living in "a golden age of the democratization of knowledge" (Zuboff), the internet has become something none of us expected. The biggest info-tech and social media brands have steadily restructured online business as well as sponsored "the wholesale destruction of privacy"(Zuboff). As experts allover the world hailed the incoming age of "Big Data" they tacitly ignored what data extraction and it's analysis would lead to. As Hal Varian writes "...is what everyone is talking about... big data. That raw material necessary for surveillance capitalism's novel manufacturing processes. Extraction based not on physical materials but on private, social and economic relations. That raw material, call it behavioral surplus, becomes the infrastructure with which the firm asserts authority to achieve economies-of-scale... Terra farming upon our experiences, daily behavior, online navigation, offline mental and physical states, and overall privacy". Makes us wonder, if there is any real privacy, or shelter, when we are online, and what actually makes us connected to it all the time?

Ever new apps and 'smart gadgets' offer new (and perhaps irresistible) ways to waste time. Our time wasted = to their profit and expansion. In cubicles, public spaces, while traveling and inside homes allover the world over, we are bombarded by a relentless stream of notifications, blinking animations, beeps and symbols from various gadgets connected online. Digital distraction is synonymous with information overload. Society in motion, appears as a hyperbole of attention deficient citizens.

Chris Wellisz (IMF) speaks of falling productivity at a global level, contrary to the image created by tech-based educators, exponents of work-from-home, gig-economies and social media. "Employers cited mobile phone use and texting as the biggest time killers, followed by the Internet, office gossip, and social media. Consequences include lower-quality work, reduced morale among workers who must pick up the slack for distracted colleagues, and missed deadlines..." The hype and hoopla of a "digitally connected and secure world" is perhaps being overshadowed by a fall in productivity and the relentlessly expansion of SBD, seen across every human convention that can be mapped yet. The knowledge based economy seems contrary to our personal productivity and not just privacy. What we seemed to have forgotten or worse given up is 'oversight'. Our sight is transfixed somewhere else? The differences in our profile, taste, language, age, sex aside, what predicates eventually is the algorithm, feeding us and occasionally rewarding us. Imagine yourself as a slot machine player, rewarded at random intervals, by a surprise payout (a new message, a comment, likes, hearts, pop-notifications, short news, weather forecasts, discounts, new job offers etc etc. The prospect of another payout (reward) is enough to keep the player pulling the handle - tapping your mobile phone.

Across large and small industry, businesses, private and public institutions, sectors of entertainment, music, arts, hospitality etc the transition is clear. Towards systems mandated by artificial intelligence, installing deeper surveillance and enabling extraction of data which is owned by a small number of but immensely powerful corporations. Being celebrated with bold taglines like "anything is possible when everything is connected" and "data is the new oil" and "the internet of things". The Harvard Business Review reminds us that "Information technology is revolutionizing products. Once composed solely of mechanical and electrical parts, products have become complex systems that combine hardware, sensors, data storage, microprocessors, software, and connectivity in myriad ways..." Welcome to the Internet of Things!

We are now living with conventional gadgets like fridges, coffee-machines, clocks, cameras, speakers, washing machines, thermostats, even doors, windows, cars, lifts, medical equipment, etc etc which can constantly send and receive data. Machines which can monitor and map our daily existence. Indeed the IRobot by Roomba does an amazing job of cleaning. It also maps the house into raw data. It has great sensors, eyes and also ears. But why does a robotized cleaner want to listen to us, via it's internal (hidden) audio-receptors? Never mind as that is a precondition of surveillance and all the private information is collected, disseminated, exploited as raw material. What better than doing actual work, when a robot can sweep the floor, or Alexa can suggest the next tune or a fridge can tell you what to eat!

The loss of privacy and the violation of civil liberties, has been sidelined by millions and millions of people, at multiple levels and perhaps with reason. For example students, scholars, journalists, doctors, scientists and teachers across the world, save huge amounts of time, of tedious research, with instantaneous visual, oral and written information at virtually no cost. Twenty years ago that velocity and quantity of information transfer was something unimaginable. With such exuberance, also comes mass exfoliation, of data, of mapping every movement, phone call, transaction, search, email message etc leaving digital trails, that can be exploited by corporations, business outlets, the police, politicians, even a nosy neighbor, hackers or an all intrusive government. Possibly we cannot block everything (and everyone) nor can we just worship this new info-utopia in the making.

To wrap up the point, surveillance capitalism does not abandon it's earlier capitalist nature. Of ​extraction, ​competition​, profit maximization, productivity and infinite growth. As Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and other information based super-corporations bitterly compete for greater global domination, the wars are not based on new continents, ships and soldiers but on the "Discovery of Behavioral Surplus" (Zuboff). Like earlier forms of colonization (geographic, linguistic, cultural etc) SBD also introduces its own distinct laws of motion, of conquest and control. Behavior and response too can be colonized and subverted to serve economies of scale and scope. Our behavioral modification is synonymous with the proliferation of surveillance capitalism and artificial intelligence. A limitless sensor of human behavior or a paradigm shift as to how society operates - that you could decide for yourself. The irony can be summed up by an internal memo of Google, which reads "​....based on the recent output, we are less valuable than others' bets on our future behavior..."

DOWNLOAD PDF  Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff

The idea that you could listen to music or continuous sound while meditating is common. The practice probably goes back to 'seeing' meditation as a means of relaxation or distressing. The practices and aesthetics of this experience seem to diverge, mutate and converge. The role of sound in the world of healing arts. New practitioners invoke for new experiences, creating new relations, which are more cerebral, less material. Over time, it brings us closer to nature, states of tranquility and balance. Artists motivated by this new experience are innovating, while moving away from fixed definitions and customs. One such artist is Aditya Vernekar, creator of 'Coma Conscious' and an electronic music producer. Blending music and human conscience as one practice, he is exploring and experimenting, navigating spaces mostly undefined and transient: "states between sleep and wakefulness" that we access (and navigate) via music and sound.

It's a bit of a weird story ... starting with a bunch of close friends who decided to delve into 'Pranic Healing' (for different personal reasons). I'm not sure what changed about them in the beginning, yet I'm sure a lot changed afterwards... but all of us didn't connect as much as we used to earlier. Things that didn't seem possible, seemed otherwise after the experience... thinking patterns and personalities changed drastically and I was making ambient music for meditation, for active listening. Inspired by one of the meditation techniques called 'Twin Hearts Meditation'. During and after the process, we felt like we entered a 'Karmic Playground' of sorts. That uncharted new place kind of feeling... Even our teachers felt so, as we couldn't be sure if our feelings were 'made up' or were 'true' in nature. The experience inspired me to compose an album titled 'Mirrors'. In short, deep changes occurred yet none of it was pre-planned. I still have not told them about this release (outcome) and I think it's time.

What is Coma Conscience?

Traditionally, we believe 'conscience' to be a moral compass of sorts. Something which acts as a guide... tells us if our actions (and choices) are right or wrong. Just or unjust. Now, my argument might sound like a totally diverging viewpoint, than what we are usually accustomed to. Conscience, it seems is something we humans developed along the way, as means to our own safety and survival. But very little is known as to how 'beneficial' this idea really is, to a given individual and the world she or he belongs to. This 'conscience' and 'othering' may not be so beneficial to you or me... What if it's not an integral part of us? Many times it's hostile to you and comes in your way and disapproves of most things. In my opinion, the more one keeps this type of conscious happy, the more miserable one becomes over time... They say that clinical psychopaths have very little to no conscience... we place high values on success, modernity, competition and material gain... Then have we bypassed our conscience? So by 'Coma Conscience', I guess what I'm describing here, is a condition - of the urban woman or man, who evolved into a Cyborg-like being, an entity of industrial functions. Morally corrupt,  self-serving, seems to be enjoying life, but at the same time is haunted, conflicted, with the conscience faltering in their minds'. That state is a strange epiphany of sorts!



Correlating the music, the Handpan and a 'Sound Bath'

The term "Sound Bath' is a catch-phrase, a marketing term coined for 'immersive active listening experiences'. With sound as a central element, what we experience while lying down with eyes closed. Off late, the practice has become globally popular and has rapidly transformed... but it goes back to the mid 1990s. Used on a scale involving many people, by the well known ambient music composer Robert Rich in his 'Sleep Concerts'. He called it "dreamcatching" And now we have a growing number of musicians, including electronic music composers, curating "Sound Baths'' using singing bowls, gongs, flutes, bells and chimes, ambient music, resonance and frequency etc to induce calm, steady and even meditative states. Some folks describe it as 'limbonic states' -  what we experience between sleep and wakefulness. Neurologically speaking, these are 'new states' that remain dormant most of the time... The underlying objective is to reduce anxiety and restlessness, and provide mentally and physically secure places.

In this aspect the 'Handpan' is an amazing magical instrument. The design (materiality and geometry) creates a resonance unlike any other instrument.  There is a 'shamanic' quality to its tonal expanse. Longtime acquainted with Vikram Shastri, founder and maker of 'Mantra Handpans' provided the inspiration, the way forward. Vikram Shastri is an activist and music composer and his Eco-conscious assembly of Handpans, not using materials which involve cruelty, while crafting the instrument in a very durable and affordable sense. Both of us, motivated by a common vision, experiences which destress, help us unwind, transcend and bring people together. Which would then correspond to a self-sustaining culture perhaps... something we create for us and for the future generation(s).

Future cosmology, maps and plans?

Well, being an Aquarian, I disappeared and dissociated from the live music scene for a while. Worked on my health, formulating new ideas and return to making more music. With a new project avatar 'A-Pax', I hope to release music in multiple genres. For different spaces and audiences. As of now everything from deep house to dub techno to psybient to progressive and even trip-hop and post-rock is seeping into my audible universe... What's been lacking for me is the space to blend the emotions, textures and reach intense dynamics on my audio canvas. The ambient and healing side of music is also a new horizon for me, as I mentioned with handpan collaboration, an emotional and cerebral new path. That said, I have 8 solid releases so far with Coma, a good enough foundation and sound for live gigs...

The slides above speak of the emerging "draconian nature" of current social-media. Emerging opinions, academic research, revelations by whistleblowers and personal experience, together makes the central argument - that social media networks, are in essence anti-democratic. The prevailing order is of mediocrity and of severely reduced attention span! An "economy of attention" has replaced the economy of labor. Vanishing reason makes way for rage and vanity (of the lumpen proletariat). Less we ignore the collective impact of social media and online surfing, which adds up as one of the big contributors of CO2 emissions.

Across social media, we witness cult-worship as common practice, new closed societies, extreme or radical groups and lookalike soundalike media. The AI which is wired to amplify (and profit) from our daily experience and behavior, mapping every click, scroll, share, send, suggest, every app and post, to what we should see, hear, buy, know and vote for. Twitter, Facebook, Tik-Tok, Instagram, YouTube etc, all profit from the above tenets and also contribute to the polarization, rising fear, anxiety and politically mandated hate (and love). In it's current form, social media is back to 'high modernism' and now hosts almost the entire 'global proleteriat'. Yet it's combined presence and domination is contrary - a virtually limitless digital autocracy, without oversight - crushing whatever is left of open society.

Can you tell if a piece of music was composed by a machine or human being? Can we agree as to what makes music feel human? Is speech (voice, syntax, rhyme, body, emotions) exclusive to humans? Can patterns regenerate? Can machine intelligence supersede human presence? These questions are a bit useless when we see scientists, artists and programmers embrace Artificial Intelligent (AI), as a convergence of experiences and knowledge. Stepping stones of a new direction? Emerging electronic music, heading back to it's experimental nature, colored by data, maths, fiction, theories and all that is AI... and yes the artist as well!

One such band is the visionary Mouse on Mars (MoM), a Berlin based duo of Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma with collaborator/percussionist Dodo NKishi. MoM has been at the avant-garde of German electronic music, almost as a "signature of joyful experimentation". Given a certain 'German privilege' (tech, institutions, curators etc) ensures continuous innovation and experimentation, Toma and Werner as producers have explored deep and hard, to make sure each MoM album sounds strikingly modern. And so is the case with the new album titled AAI (Anarchic Artificial Intelligence). MoM's 18th album is a collaboration, with programmers, academics and graphic interpreters. The 'über alles' of AI and electronic music are calling the album as a "quantum leap further". The new album by MoM is an exciting 'event' for us, to discuss the emerging paths of composition, collaboration and control, based on AI.

Lead by Prof Louis Chude-Sokei and Dodo NKishi (drummer and percussionist), a group of software programmers explored AI, as a narrative and compositional tool. Most of them inspired by science-fiction. Text which often dwells into existential themes however framed within a technologically superior future. Artwork by Casey Reas, pioneer of computer graphics language processing, an emerging example of code based art. Infinitesimal to be precise!

Fans and fanatics consider Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma, to be scientist (wizards) of synthesis and generative electronica. Working with AI tech-collective Birds on Mars and former Soundcloud programmers Rany Keddo and Derek T, lead to the creation of 'bespoke software'. A program capable of modelling speech by learning human input. A new virtual singer? "Allowing Toma and Werner to control parameters like speed, body and even mood, thereby creating a kind of speech instrument that could be manipulated like a synthesizer". The legacy of speech to synthesis, voice modelling, robotization, sampling and all such endless manipulation is decades in the making, going back to the 1960s (Delia Derbishire, Ray Kurzweil, Elaine Radigue, Atom™ etc). In 2022, we are eager to know more about new AI based tools. More importantly, what they may deliver beyond what has already been achieved. Take Emmi (2005) for example, coded by Prof. David Cope which generated Bach like etudes, as sheet music and midi, for classical musicians.

Anarchic Artificial Intelligence as a record, is clearly turbulent and perhaps a potent example of things to come. Divergent and peculiar, staged yet spontaneous, normal (linear) sequencers and popular DAWs do not lead to this sort of ebb and flow. This sort of "differential regenerative music". The multitude of machine generated voices layered across the album, makes it more accessible to people. The singers are artificial and political, poetic yet incoherent, dark and even slightly emotive. However placed within limits, as heard earlier in various types of electronic music. Long time in the making, computation tools have impacted our creativity since the early 1970s. Consequently influencing (deeply) how we think about music, as means to collaborate with and also bear new expectations based on new output. MoM's new album is carrying that legacy forward, facing the future, stoking a decent amount of "anarcho-hope" along the way. Thrill Jockey as a progressive label too boost!

 
From the sleeve notes of AAI. "Chude-Sokei’s text, as machine learning advances, robots begin to develop language, conscience, deliver with empathy - also acquire “anarchic” and unpredictable qualities...". Outside the realms of experimental electronic music, that vision does not concur with reality, especially when we see (and feel) the sharp rise of divisive algorithms, digital censorship, AI used by social media, by the police and surveillance states. Does AI serve people? Not so sure as we investigate further. Faith in current forms of AI is clearly detrimental, when it comes to history, identity, ethnicity and political beliefs. But this was about music right? As a new collaborator, AI is definitely an exciting prospect, proliferating rapidly, similar to earlier waves of technology that impacted the previous generations (culture, production, labor, industry etc). The release note of AAI posits that "we must embrace AI and technology as a collaborator to break out of our current cultural and moral stagnation, and to ensure our survival as a species".

At an artistic level one finds inspiration (and hope for regeneration) when composers and music producers speak with such resonance and meaning. At an individual level, this insurgent technology will surely impact the way we imagine music. However this technology, like most innovation and use, is clearly dependent on the given privilege (nation, race, access etc).

AI based music sounds promising, however yet to arrive as a game-changer. AI will impact the incoming generation of music producers, in ways which will be audible in the music. About popular electronic music of today, 3 decades in the making, has arguably gone past it's apex. Every proto-culture follows a meteoric rise and consequent flattening out. Perhaps in the near future, electronic music itself will be 'more intelligent' - however artificial or regenerative. Sounds yet unheard coming from systems yet to be imagined. The first steps, the groundwork towards that transformation, is surely happening now. Mouse on Mars has yet again put out a bold and meticulous sound, a statement, divergent and exciting, far from the mainstream. MoM is "engineering systems" for future hits!

Earlier this year, FEMWAV launched a new program, based on distributed mentorship, called Organic Support Program (OSP). The objective is to provide one-to-one mentorship which is free of cost. OSP is for emerging female and queer musicians (based in India) who need help (skills) that directly impact music production and more importantly the "ability to navigate the music industry". Given that music education and training in India is clearly expensive, always centered inside big cities - OSP is an intervention to such limitations of finance and distance. With OSP, FEMWAV is offering a way for "education without economic constrains". We asked FEMWAV a few questions about OSP and the need for this new type of mentorship?

What is OSP?
A network of music professionals are contributing 10 hours each over 6 months – to empower a new artist (you!). Hands-on knowledge, skills and insights. Building blocks necessary for a stable dynamic career. Individually 10 hours is less than 1% of our annual working time. Yet when we add up and value, it’s simply powerful and pragmatic know-how!  Check the diagram below to figure the timeline and growth...

Why? Remember when you were a newbie, looking around for help,for guidance and gigs? How to? Where to? Just like that, today’s emerging female and NB talent merits the guidance, solidarity and love. FEMWAV is addressing the problem with a new ‘organic’ solution! Education independent of economics. Existing academies and music schools in India do not encourage nor allow free exchange of knowledge and skills. Our research shows that a majority of the courses offered in these schools, are insufficient and sometimes misleading - especially for new artists with limited resources (money). Music schools and academies in India as a culture, do not teach students how to 'navigate' the industry. The missing component, to make an artist independent and not just professional.

For Who? In India, thousands and thousands of women (at least) have no access to professional guidance, production skills, PR, mentorship and funding – all of which are needed to manifest a successful career in music. Institutions, schools and ‘big artists’ do not address this principle point of inequality. Hence to create an intervention, we opted for a new strategy. As any experiment, we are starting the program at a small scale, to observe the primary impact. The idea is to amplify organically, when more and more mentees can participant at the same time! Check the 8 modules (worth 10 hours each) that we are offering.

Calling it organic kinship?
A good mentorship program should create new kinship on both sides (the mentor and the mentee). This connection (and motivation) should be free of economic exchange. The deal is simple. OSP modules (worth 10 hours each) are conducted over a 6 month interim period. ‘Distributed Mentorship’ works online and in-person. Each module adds new skills, knowledge and insight for the aspiring talent. OSP is based on one mentor and one mentee exchange model. Both agree to enter a mentoring relationship to help the mentee develop, improve and achieve her goal. OSP is self-regulatory. Which means that FEMWAV will not be monitoring every stage. We trust both sides to excel! Check the basic guidelines created to maximize your participation, ensure growth and safety.

OSP Introduction and details
Program is active now!

 

A playlist to disconnect from routine based activity. Sound as a medium - a passage over time - to travel inwards, with your ears, mind and body (not just eyes). Disconnect from structures in order to connect with the androgynous (no words), amorphous (temporal) and ambient? Close your eyes if be, and begin an imaginary journey. Where and how far do you wander? Perhaps you can go way further...

1. Takashi Kokubo (小久保隆)
2. Hiroshi Yoshimura 'Green' MV2
3. Tomoyuki Asakawa Bioçic - Aqua バイオシッ
4. Max Richter Passage Piano Edit MV3
5. Elaine Radigue 'Occam Ocean'
6. William Basinsky - Disintergration Loops + Water Music II
7. Aphex Twin 'Stone in Focus' Original Ver
8. Hang Drum by Vibhas Rahul + Live Sampling

https://www.mixcloud.com/audio_pervert/ambient-to-disconnect/
duration - 42 minutes

"Kinship"
Definition : A "system of social organization based on blood based family ties..." (Encyclopaedia Britannica). That organization also exists within nature, culture, language, arts and interpersonal relationships. Numerous types of kinship, extended, temporal, living or dead.

Professor Emerita, eco-feminist and writer Donna J. Haraway has progressively amplified the concept of kinship, as a direction, leading us out of the Anthropocene (our current age). The missing kinship we need, to face the perilous state of the living planet. She’s been at it for decades now! Her landmark 1985 “A Cyborg Manifesto” was a bit of an "earthquake" within prevailing feminist theory. In 2003, "The Companion Species Manifesto" examined our innate connection to dogs, as well as other non-human “critters” (a favorite Haraway word). By early 2000, Donna Haraway was an emerging figure in animal studies, ecology and feminism. Her background as a scientist and cultural scholar, extended her influence beyond academia, inspiring a generation of artists, writers and new scientists. Haraway is insisting, with brilliant insight, backed by scientific power, that our relationship with nature has fundamentally gone wrong. And that broken status is getting worse, and is missing 'kinship'. Now think of "kin” and “kind” - etymologically they’re closely related. To be kind is to be kin, but kin is not kind. "Kin is often quite the opposite of kind. Not necessarily be biologically related but in some consequential way belong in the same category, group, species etc with positive and negative consequences..." says Haraway.

Kinship is one of the most important organizing components of society. Kinship has been part of our evolution, some argue even before the dawn of Homo Sapiens. What is referred as social, is an invisible but universal institution that ties individuals and groups together. Hosting relationships of layered complexities amongst us all. Haraway points out that some of these institutions, over millennia have failed to progress and hence elicit change. With a sense of emergency she explains "making kin seems to me, is most in need in a culture that rips us apart from each other, in a world that already hosts almost 8 billion human beings, with very unequal and unjust patterns of suffering and well-being. By kin I mean those who have an enduring mutual, obligatory, non-optional, you-can’t-just-cast-that-away-when-it-gets-inconvenient, types of 'relatedness that carries consequences'... as we relate to our children and they relate to us.. I have a cousin, the cousin has me; I have a dog, a dog has me; i have the earth and the earth has me..."

In her book Staying With The Trouble (2017), Donna Haraway insists on "stirring up" and "confronting troubled times". She compels us to feel the indigenous people's kinship to natural systems (rivers, mountains, forests etc). She describes how the Anthropocene has rapidly run off the rails. "We live in such mixed up times... made of so much unnecessarily killing... the ongoing mass extinction and severely impoverished ecosystems... society constantly fluctuating between anxiety, pain, speculation and momentary joy". Haraway insists that by making new kin, new relationships, "new trouble" and "clearing away past myths", we stand a chance to make way for a future, which will not be based on "salvation, magic or technological progress". She eschews, gradually divesting from the current epoch (the Anthropocene), moving into what she conceptualizes as the "Chthulucene". The book vividly describes a future landscape of unforeseen bio-mutation, not so far away, where the human and non-human are inextricably linked in "tentacular" forms and practices. "I imagine those replete with tentacles, feelers, digits, cords, whip-tales, spider legs and unruly hair... Multi-species with the ability to share ecosystems in harmony.. very different from the sky gazing Homo Sapiens 10,000 years ago...". Oh! sounds like another Hollywood 'alien mutation' meets 70s Sci-Fi? Actually far from it.

Influenced by the flowering of feminist science fiction of the ’70s and 80s, Haraway cites books which could be seen as radical, dark and beautiful, like Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, Joanna Russ’s The Female Man, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren, and the Tales of Nevèrÿon to name a few. Haraway went on to create her "little skein of fibers based on science fiction, like 'string figures, speculative fabulation, science fact, speculative feminism, and even so far". However Haraway is not merely amplifying nostalgia and science fiction. While on one hand she retains a clear kinship with the above writers, yet on the other hand she presents new horizons, based on emerging science and ecology, new ways of thinking to be precise. Her implications of kin versus family are vast. Revised, of kinship which encompasses all non-human relations.

That kinship which gradually removes the Homo Sapien from it's dominant position. She slams at the old farcical myths and idiotic notions of glory that we have held on for centuries. Haraway unboxes her ideas, with the objective to improve our relationship with the planet, at micro and macro levels. Haraway is no moralist. She is replacing 'human relations' with 'kin' which arguably brings about a transformation. A revolution of our hierarchies and priorities. The very definition of what amounts to a family and why kinship goes way beyond blood, race and language relationships. Why not care as much about a Mudskipper as you do about your niece or a Blue Whale or a Panda? Sounds too far out?! Perhaps we are struck down by our own limitations, unable to re-imagine and re-act.

Haraway's argument and imagination is linked to the evolution of bio-science - made of ecology, genetics, marine biology, medicine, stem-cell research etc. For about forty years now, Haraway has connected analysis and activism. Staying With The Trouble (2017) transcends disciplinary boundaries. Traversing biology, science studies, art history and philosophy with fiction, political activism and new Etymologies. She insists that we learn to tell new stories, that strengthen ecological response-ability and individual resilience. She warns with duress, that a world characterized by ongoing environmental irresponsibility and irrevocable faith in technology, is both "appallingly murderous and leading us even closer to ecocide...". 

Haraway questions our food and agriculture. The system of mono-cropping has yielded an epic disaster in slow motion. From America to China to Chile to India, the impact of modern agriculture resonates with Haraway's conclusion. "When you take the complex biodiversity of a given region, and you not only radically simplify its ecology, but you also rapidly reduce the kinds of organisms, flora and fauna that live there. Then, you displace the labor force that’s already there and import a new labor force, using various forms of force, contract, even violence and indentured servitude. You bring in new crops, seeds, fertilizers, chemicals and irrigation systems, that promise higher and higher yields, proffered by the global markets and economics... the state and private corporations also bring in a labor force that literally can’t run away... At the same time, we begin to notice how bankrupt the ecosystems have become.. And you call all that “agriculture”? questions Haraway in a recent interview.

Kinship is vital to the well being of a person and a community. Because different societies define kinship differently, they also set varied rules governing kinship. Given certain rules impose limitations, setting boundaries, fostering myths. Many times such kinship is detrimental, divisive to the way we connect (and view) others. 'Don't talk to strangers'! The "non-kin" such as other species, other races, languages, customs and cultures. Wild animals are not how the dominant culture frames them. Countless doltish animated 'Hakuna Matata' movies or lavish hi-definition documentaries enable such false narratives and myths to perpetuate. The loss is ours however, and not of the "critters". Haraway laments how generations of children have been force fed such detrimental narratives, while she opines on the need to challenge (and divest) such traditional forms of kinship.

At the heart of Donna Haraway's vision is a marriage of science, activism and art. A regenerative state between human beings and nature. In her numerous lectures and presentations, we begin to understand some of the practices for becoming "more worldly and less clan type". Especially in a time of unprecedented environmental destruction, mass extinction and exodus, ongoing war and a chaotic overloaded civilization. When asked if she is speculating a better future in the face of collapse denial? She replies "No! For one thing, I think that’s cheap... that I can just go on enjoying myself or suffer chronically in despair? Or join a closed group or embrace new green myths. It’s lazy. It's a dead end of sorts... I’m neither optimistic nor pessimistic. Those are but extremes...The book I wrote was called Staying with the Trouble on purpose, and yes I am against techno-optimism..."