HUPOMNEMATA

Cosplay and identity questions and Goth-Lolitas (and hand-sewn gold-trimmed capes).

“It’d weird, after all, alienating to want to be someone else, even in pretend. It stirs deep questions about our own comfort in our skins. It makes us questions our identities – and maybe throw out the assumption that we are static beings. When we’re faced with cosplay, we are forced to acknowledge that the self is a mutable aspect, a vagary of mood, a personality shifting and shiftless and unrooted.”

read the rest of it in the always excellent Game Girl Advance
This, below, is a Matrix cosplay.

a classical compilation of sci-fi movies through history by Tim Dirks.
a home-made page as I like them

go and see

From a review by Dillon Font on animefringe:

“The tale goes as follows:
The turn of the millennium saw Earth’s first contact with an alien species, and fifteen years later, the world seems to have come back to normal. Well… sort of. Now schools, at the very least, are plagued with varying levels of alien infestation. Somehow only vaguely explained in the backstory, these schools are prone to having alien animals hanging around, some of which present a threat to the children attending school.

In order to have life continue on as necessary, the schools enlist three sixth-grade students, one from grade class, to be a part of the Alien Party. This Party involves giving these three students alien symbiotic beings that attach themselves to the heads of the students and, on rollerblades, the three students patrol the school building and deal with any alien outbreaks.”

Read the rest of the review here.

The complete story has already been published in Spain by Ivréa. (but now it’s in English I can even read AND understand it). Should definitely be part of our Barcelona library for Stitch and Split!

An interesting filmography listing everything fantasy and sf related with feminist elements in it. It contains some stuff I had completely forgotten about (like Tank Girl, does anyone remember what’s happening in Tank Girl?). Loads of info in the rest of the website too.

Stitch and Split

“And why not a fanzine?”

One of Tom’s work.

Selves and Territories in Science Fiction

“The split and contradictory self is the one who can interrogate positionings and be accountable, the one who can construct and join rational conversations and fantastic imaginings that change history. Splitting, not being, is the privileged image for feminist epistemologies of scientific knowledge. ‘Splitting’ in this context should be about heterogeneous multiplicities that are simultaneously necessary and incapable of being squashed into isomorphic slots or cumulative lists. This geometry pertains within and among subjects. The topography of subjectivity is multidimensional; so therefore is vision. The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming be another.”
Donna Haraway, Situated Knowledges

A project by Constant vzw
For Fundació Tàpies
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Stitch and Split
I met Isabelle, the 19th of June, at le Ptit Yoyo at Brussels University, a dark place painted in red. We had expressos, and chatted about the project called ‘Stitch and Split’. Well maybe it is time that one of the first draft of this project should be on this blog, so next post will contain it. One of the thing Isabelle told me was: ‘Never destroy a text before you write a new (better?) version of it.’ She told me also that we should write a diary of this project, to document it. So these posts are part of that diary, and I guess most of this blog is part of that too, in a way. Again Isabelle: that may be this project, will be a way we could visit one another library, exchange experience of reading, exchange books, texts, characters. Have fan activities, as this diary could be like a fanzine. One of her questions, trails for this projects: ‘What is about science fiction which allows fans to enter it, and be creative with it, and use, develop their imagination? May be because there is the creation of precise world, with its rules, its geography, its ecology, and characters. And this framework allows imagination at work.’ And she told me about Marion Zimmer Bradley, who published fan stories in some of her books. Fans were welcome to create new characters in her world, but not allowed to take and write the characters she created first.
She talked to me also about David Brin, CJ Cherryh, Samuel Butler. If you want to follow this conversation, go on reading.
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robert a.metzger’s ” picoverse ” is advertised as a “mind-boggling hard-science SF novel”.
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A nice and exhaustive history of telephone in Atlanta:
images and sounds from early telephones, documenting the technological evolution but you can learn more about the social movements inside the company(strikes) and early hackers(Phone Freaking)

read more

I had since long forgotten it. A bookmark’s resurrection, the unabomber manifesto’s table of contents and the link to the text, the other link to the trial and the third to the unabomber timeline

The Unabomber’s Manifesto

Industrial Society And Its Future

Table of Contents
# Introduction
# The Psychology Of Modern Leftism
# Feelings Of Inferiority
# Oversocialization
# The Power Process
# Surrogate Activities
# Autonomy
# Sources Of Social Problems
# Disruption Of The Power Process In Modern Society
# How Some People Adjust
# The Motives Of Scientists
# The Nature Of Freedom
# Some Principles Of History
# Industrial-Technological Society Cannot Be Reformed
# Restriction Of Freedom Is unavoidable In Industrial Society
# The ‘Bad’ Parts Of Technology Cannot Be Seperated From The ‘Good’ Parts
# Technology Is A More Powerful Social Force Than The Aspiration Freedom
# Simpler Social Problems Have Proved Intractable
# Revolution Is Easier Than Reform
# Control Of Human Behavior
# Human Race At A Crossroads
# Human Suffering
# The Future
# Strategy
# Two Kinds Of Technology
# The Danger Of Leftism
# Final Note
# Notes