Benjamin H. Bratton

A comprehensive political and design theory of planetary-scale computation proposing that The Stack -- an accidental megastructure -- is both a technological apparatus and a model for a new geopolitical architecture.

On Software and Sovereignty

The Stack

The Terraforming

Equal parts Borges, Burroughs, Baudrillard, and Black Ops, Dispute Plan to Prevent Future Luxury Constitution charts a treacherous landscape filled with paranoid master plans, failed schemes, and dubious histories. Benjamin H. Bratton's kaleidoscopic theory-fiction links the utopian fantasies of political violence with the equally utopian programs of security and control. Both rely on all manner of doubles, models, gimmicks, ruses, prototypes, and shock-and-awe campaigns to realize their propagandas of the deed, threat, and image. Blurring reality and delusion, they collaborate on a literally psychotic politics of architecture. The cast of characters in this ensemble drama of righteous desperation and tactical trickery shuttle between fact and speculation, action and script, flesh and symbol, death and philosophy: insect urbanists, seditious masquerades, epistolary ideologues, distant dissimulations, carnivorous installations, forgotten footage, branded revolts, imploding skyscrapers, sentimental memorials, ad-hoc bunkers, sacred hijackings, vampire safe-houses, suburban enclaves, big-time proposals, ambient security protocols, disputed borders-of-convenience, empty research campuses, and robotic surgery. In this mosaic we glimpse a future city built with designed violence and the violence of design. As one ratifies the other, the exception becomes the ruler. e-flux journal Series edited by Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle

Dispute Plan to Prevent Future Luxury Constitution

Nick Axel

Nicolay Boyadjiev

Strelka Institute of Media, Architecture, and Design was founded by entrepreneur and philanthropist Alexander Mamut in 2009 to change the cultural and physical landscapes of Russian cities. The institute promotes positive changes and creates new ideas and values through its educational activities. This thorough, inspirational book is the first major publication emerging from Strelka's The New Normal program. The institute's most ambitious research unit focuses on research and design for Moscow and explores the opportunities posed by emerging technologies for interdisciplinary urban design practices. Strelka is a speculative urbanism think-tank and a platform for the invention and articulation of a new discourse and new models. The New Normal has been conceived by the American sociologist and architectural theorist Benjamin H. Bratton, who is known for his unique mix of philosophical and aesthetic research, organizational planning and strategy, and for his writing on the cultural implications of computing and globalization. The book features seventeen lavishly illustrated contributions by international researchers and designers that outline the scope of The New Normal's output, held together by a thematic essay in nine chapters by Bratton. Highly topical, this first comprehensive survey of research work produced by The New Normal program will appeal to all readers interested in the future of cities and urban design.

The New Normal

Anna Greenspan

Bogna Konior

China and the History and Future of AI

Machine Decision Is Not Final

Jussi Parikka

Reza Negarestani

T. J. Demos

The ecological crisis the world is currently experiencing calls for an urgent rethinking of our relationship to nature, natural resources, and the entirety of life on Earth, as well as that of humans to each other. The time has come for repurposing coexistence, aided by post-human thought and technological advancement, and for realizing that humans are merely part of, rather than the center of, our world. Potential Worlds: Planetary Memories and Eco-Fictions, published in conjunction with group shows at Zurich's Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst and Baku's YARAT Contemporary Art Space, questions forms of knowledge developed in the course of annexation of the environment and asks what ideas of nature might emerge from the current crisis and how we might perceive nature in the future. Thirty-six artists from around the world featured in this book examine the ecological and social consequences of the past and ongoing conquests of land for purposes of accumulating power and resources. Essays by Benjamin H. Bratton, T. J. Demos, Reza Negarestani, and Jussi Parikka shed light on multiple different perspectives, such as colonialism, post-humanism, ecology, and artistic adaption of new technologies, and investigate the potential future of mankind living in alliance with nature and the role of art in this undertaking as a technological, scientific, and social experiment. Concise texts on the work of the participating artists and an introduction by curators Suad Garayeva-Maleki and Heike Munder round out this illustrated volume.

Planetary Memories and Eco-Fictions

Potential Worlds

Benjamin H. Bratton

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