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Detroit Development and Surveillance

All photos and video shot Easter Sunday, 2014.

Updated & Re-edited May 16, 2014 and added voice over: RUIN PORN is an art movement that focuses on the decline of cities, buildings and infrastructure, specifically capturing urban decay and VACANCY. DETROIT and other post-industrial cities around the world are popular subjects. RUIN PORN has been widely criticized for exploiting other’s economic and social hardships while fueling a post-apocalyptic vision that disregards historical and social context, a tabula rasa or ‘blank slate’.

In Detroit, this vision, these ‘blank slate glasses’ justify a lawlessness and often unrecognized inhumanity that supports not an end to corruption, but merely the transference of corruption from one set of hands to the next. With some analysis and honesty, it can become apparent that there are long-term overt and covert strategies at play here. In governance, Emergency Management being one of many examples. In development, Detroit Future City’s strategic ‘winners and losers’ is another.

The population of ‘losers’, the anticipated and engineered losses, those left behind and their outrage, anger or inability to cope, for whatever the reason, are then used to justify the creation of a high-tech private surveillance infrastructure that protects investments through numerous private policing authorities that have vast and overlapping jurisdictions and little accountability, save to their corporate guidelines.

DETROIT DEVELOPMENT/SURVEILLANCE PORN is a visual meditation/mediation on history, power, surveillance and the displacement of people that strives towards a creative commentary on and counter-expression to RUIN PORN. It strives toward documenting the ABANDONMENT and VACANCY of humanity that is interwoven in CORPORATE DOMINATION of our experience.

ORIGINAL DOCUMENTATION:

Good Afternoon Detroit and all.
This morning’s Meditation/Mediation has bleed into the afternoon. It carries forward from the weekend’s focus on resurrection and relationships. Yesterday, I took advantage of the holiday to shoot some “b-roll” for a project and do what I used to call a ‘walkabout’, a visionary moving/walking/sitting mediation through ‘Gillyville’, the area of downtown owned by Dan Gilbert.

This is an attempt at portraying the sterility of surveillance and corporate dominance of the landscape in a way that contrasts the drive-by, objectification of abandonment and vacancy that frames what has been identified as ‘ruin porn’.

For me, it’s also an expression of the heavy-handed, top-down approach to development currently, and historically, applied in Detroit. My intention was to commune with the space in a different way, from a different perspective, listen to the buildings and the angles/angels.

When I worked for Compuware in the 00s I would spend smoke breaks walking through all the alleyways, learning what was behind the structures, the ‘backside’ of the system, mapping the relationship between what is seen and what is not. So much has changed in the past decade.

Yesterday, I was able to reconnect to that aspect of my intuition, to that ‘soulful’ work that lead me to an awareness that Detroit, being built on a ‘straight’, a waterway connecting two larger bodies of water, and due to this, is an elemental (land/water) crossroads, a portal for transformation, a sacred space, a powerful node in the aetheric/energetic realm. I thank my makers for bringing me this far.

Due to the energetic qualities of this work I couldn’t sleep last night. This video emerged as a rather random and rough document of what I saw and heard. Being spontaneous and random, there are a ton of ‘mistakes’ that make me cringe, but there are others that raise hairs. I close with this poem/invocation of elemental energies from 2003.

Much Respect and Gratitude.

Promethean Night, a curse on angels

I remember watching as the city burned amazed and awaiting ever august Detroit made devils night as she did Valliants and Galaxies

Burning Prometheus rising planting apocalyptic dreams in virile minds to seek vengeance and let loose on landscapes

I now watch crass angels in suits move clean machines across the lucid Vulcan dreamscapes of once infinite possibilities broken glass and pavement cracks allow breath, oxygen to burn

I curse sterile attempts to polish and smother and command Prometheus rise again!

*This was written in my cubicle while working at Compuware, ‘Angel’s/Devil’s Night’, October 30, 2003. It was either part of the impetus for, or grew from, my involvement with the Detroit Promethean Society, which is a story for another time. ~ ed. Sept. 2012

©EschatonLife

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Is It Time, Yet?

Graphic meditations on time and domestication from 2014.

‘Death needs TIME for what it kills to grow in’ ~William S. Burroughs

The domination of both our reality (social) and reality (geography) by white men is intended to facilitate the ongoing domestication of the human animal, our selves, our families, our communities and all other life in this space. This is done for the profit and benefit of a few. ‘They’ are those who can operate globally and, for the most part, who do so in their own interest and in so doing perpetuate the domination of their world-view. Domestication is dependent on perpetuating indoctrination through education and normalization, on fostering dependence on external resources that necessitate continued participation for survival, and on maintaining conflict between people through the counter-intuitive and divisive social systems of race and class.

Our de-evolution from unMEDIAted human animals to consumer cogs in designed environments is, in part, dependent up a unification of our concept of TIME and the repression of organic or indigenous calendar systems. Our economy is based upon time being linear or ‘running in a straight line’, from the past to the future. Our biological and intuitive patterns are intentionally tuned to a human-made system and away from more organic ones. Cutting this root connection to the natural world serves as a means to normalize and regulate our minds and bodies towards patterns of consumption.

It is TIME to consider once again trusting ourselves and our instincts.

This  will  take  TIME. 

 

©EschatonLife

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DETROIT IS A SPIRITUAL BATTLEFIELD


RESPECTFULLY IN:VOK:ING ALL PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE MEMBERS AND ALLIES VARIOUS HANDS, LOCAL 23, DETROIT CHAPTER – DETROIT PROMETHEAN SOCIETY – DETROIT AREA DEPROGRAMMING ALLIANCE & SPIRITUAL WARRIORS OF ALL DENOMINATIONS FOR INTENTIONAL, NON-HIERARCHICAL,  COLLECTIVE RESISTANCE THAT RECOGNIZES THE POWERS AT PLAY & WHAT IS REALLY AT STAKE

FACT CHECK: WE LIVE IN A MAGICKAL UNIVERSE

THE GEOGRAPHIC AREA CURRENTLY KNOWN AS DETROIT IS, HAS BEEN & WILL BE SACRED GROUND. The matrix, the grid, which many will recognize as the tree and the pillars, used here is an attempt to mediate the energy that thrives here into systems of control, consumption and death. DETROIT IS A SPIRITUAL BATTLEFIELD, you know this in your bones.

Proposal: Let us, together and apart, continue the historical practice of many groups and individuals here, to do ritual, say prayers, chant and throw curses to shift power. The vision that was planted in my brain still remains. Hesse’s “For Madwomen Only” remixed. If I were to put all my heart and my all being into the struggle at hand it would look and feel something like this.

This is my expression of the voice that silently wakes me every morning at 3am. I inuit that some of you know this voice. This is a call to the madwomen, shamen, mutants, healers, prophets, clerics, street sorcerers and medicine women. If nothing else, this, maybe more than anything else, this will scare the shit out of them. If they are still men, in the middle of the night it will creep up on them. It scares me. I’m not at my strongest, in some ways I’m more broken than I’ve ever been. Maybe that’s the sweet spot.

Maybe this is where I share what I know more than I have, without the veneer. I’ve studied the Book of Job and the story of Faust for the majority of my time here. If, in fact, God and the Devil play dice with the universe, I intuit that people of both faith and science are invited to influence the roll with our thoughts, actions and deeds.

THE VISION THAT WAS PLANTED IN MY BRAIN STILL REMAINS. 

FOR MADWOMEN ONLY

IF I WERE TO PUT ALL MY HEART AND MY ALL BEING INTO THE STRUGGLE AT HAND IT WOULD LOOK AND FEEL SOMETHING LIKE THIS. THIS IS MY EXPRESSION OF THE VOICE THAT SILENTLY WAKES ME EVERY MORNING AT 3AM. I’VE SENT THIS TO YOU BECAUSE I INTUIT YOU KNOW THAT VOICE. THIS IS A CALL TO THE MADWOMEN, SHAMEN, MUTANTS, HEALERS, PROPHETS, CLERICS, STREET SORCERERS AND MEDICINE WOMEN. 

THE SIGN SAID THE WORDS OF THE PROPHETS WERE WRITTEN ON THE WALLS I SAY THEY ARE WRITTEN IN OUR DNA. WE ARE INFINITE BEINGS HAVING A FINITE EXPERIENCE THAT WE IS DETERMINED BY OUR LIVES. THIS IS NOT OUR CITY, BUT WE ARE ITS CARE TAKERS AND WE MUST STAND UP TO PROTECT IT.

©EschatonLife

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An excerpt from “l’anathème de la naine rouge”

The Anathema of the Red Dwarf;
A Sermon to the Hypocrites of Detroit

A poetic drama in seven parts based upon a conversation overheard, August 2013

The Call

The Magician/Fool: I call upon Le Nain Rouge, my friend, the scourge of the land, to rise up with us and reclaim THIS land, for people, animal, vegetable, mineral, for those who came long before and will come, amen. The settlers have returned to settle the score, take back the isle, the water, and so much more. I fear their souls as my own.

Of course they designed not to know that this IS their intention, only the handful who are directing the show, the one’s with the dough, are in the know. it is not their intention, they’re cleaning the place up. The problem, my old accomplice, is that they are using your name, to move forward their lot, I know that you know they’ve been burning you yearly, a state sanctioned festive riot of fire and glut.

They’ve mangled your story, and marketed everything from beer to bacon with your name. What is worse, they’ve linked you with something I’ve yet to understand, they have rendered you in serve to the ruler of this, your own land. I know not to trust you, I know the score, this is not the first time I’ve stood at your door. We all are children of this white plague, but I think at this time there are more than enough things upon which we agree, not to take up the cause and dispose this lunacy.

Nain, my old friend, I ken you’ve spoken through me time and again. My vitriol, my spite, my fear in the night, my mother, my father, my brothers and sisters, along with their lovers. I do not know my own power lost friends. Nain, you are a slice of the fire, the Promethean light, that stings and sings in me, what do you say to my proposal today?

Can you speak to the people, speak in a way they can all understand, the white and the black, all the manufactured pawns in this multi- fronted attack? I know you’ll be harsh, pointed in fact, by no means do I wish to censor your ballast, but ask that you keep it well rounded and not spare anyone venom and their moment in the light of your night.

©EschatonLife

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Operation Mind Fuck #173

Operation Mind Fuck #173
RE-Created June 13, 2013

This is a new Poem in the TIMEFIX series. (My attempts at PKD, before reading his works.) If you’re lucky enough to still have the scars, you hero… dig out your goggles, get some tape or string or something, and strap ’em on. 

Note: My life is the disclaimer. My successes, other’s failures, some folk want/need to be turned up, some folks want/need to be turned way down. Pretty complex architecture on the want/need border for most of us these days. 

While I’ll be held accountable to the tune of offering preflight support through this poem, and possible banter upon return, I must point out that this is a Mind Fuck and if you elect to hit play you, whatever your motives, you are willfully entering into realms I have absolutely no influence in.

Put frankly, if it gets deep, no one is going to be able to wade out and get your ass because your coordinates will be dictated by the timing of your breath, the speed of your internet connection, the varied neurological distance between your decision to hit the link and your hand. I would also suggest influence from the location of the sun and moon, your level of hydration and mood or emotional/energetic state. 

So, all that to say, there’s a great deal going on that will influence whether this is a blissed-out industrial angelic choir or demonic dystopian cacophony. I try not to judge though, maybe today is the day I need a demonic cacophony to see what I need to see. I don’t like to lead, but my personal Mind Fuck sweet-spot, where I gain the most in the way of insight, is the quite tangible dance between the two. 

Archival: 

This is a RE-Creation of the ritualized experiments I performed on myself with cassette decks and cd player ‘boom boxes’, a handful of buzzing TV’s and a hand-crafted freestanding Dreamachine. I smile, a little tongue in cheek, when I share that many of these experiments were played out in an underground ‘bunker’, an unfinished sauna in what could be considered an abandoned suburban Bloomfield garage. The people who lived there seem ghosts to me now, the depression so deep, we never cut the grass or went into the garage. My rig is probably still there, rust and mold. I’ll never forget how the room used to fill with water and/or fire.

These are not and will always be ‘new’ ideas. I have no idea where the line can be drawn between my influences and my original expressions. I still intuit that my influences practiced and held the same perspective. This round of experiments was deeply influenced by my exposure to William S. Burroughs, Bryon Gysin and their ilk, through vengefully purchasing an LP by an unknown to me band called Throbbing Gristle. As much as I oft deplore that my entrance is through consumption, therein lies the birth of my personal culture war. While it surpassed it’s vitriolic intention, I didn’t care for the LP musically. I was in the midst of a fall from new wave into punk and, shudder, goth, and quite frankly the noise that came out of my speakers freaked me out quite a bit. Yet somehow it resonated with me, it only took my OCD mind a short amount of time to connect to their influences which included many of the folk I was researching in an attempt at the self-guided mental surgery that this poem documents. I know in some realms it still exists, so forgive the nostalgia, but I used a very different means of gathering information back in the day that required leg work. I’d sell plasma to raise the funds to get a rare book shipped from overseas, all the while praying that it wasn’t shite. I’d get rides out to U of M without means of getting home so that I could spend days in their half-floor stacks, pouring through books attempting to make a map of the stuff the Surrealists were channeling. 

The RE-Created Experiment:

Sit down comfortably, breathe mindfully, put on your headset and/or turn it up a bit,- open these three links, one each time you exhale, sit back, close your eyes and keep breathing mindfully. thanks for playing and good luck. You’re getting one small piece of pretty massively detailed system that I designed for self-guided mental surgery. 

Zos Kia / Coil Here to Here (Double-Headed Secret), Transparent, 1984

Boyd Rice and Frank Tovey, Easy Listening for the Hard of Hearing, 1984

Chris and Cosey, Haunted Heroes, Techno Primitiv, 1985