Covert , livre ebook

Triarchy Press - Melanie Kloetzel

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93 pages

English

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Description

Using 30 carefully crafted 'movement meditations', Covert outlines a straightforward, embodied practice that we can use to defend ourselves against screens, digital media and online advertising.

Sujets

Mind

Informations

Publié par	Triarchy Press
Date de parution	25 janvier 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781913743161
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0625€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Published in this first edition in 2021 by:
Triarchy Press
Axminster, UK
www.triarchypress.net
Copyright Melanie Kloetzel and Phil Smith, 2021
The right of Melanie Kloetzel and Phil Smith to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including photocopying, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBNs:
Print: 978-1-913743-15-4
ePub: 978-1-913743-16-1
PDF: 978-1-913743-17-8
Photographs by Brooks Peterson ~ brookspeterson.com (except photos on pp. 25 , 41 , 61 , 73 , 81 and 90 by Melanie Kloetzel)
Printed by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall
We would like express our gratitude to photographer Brooks Peterson, photo subjects Al n Martel, Cindy Ansah, Stephanie Jurkova, and Laura Hynes, as well as all those who have participated and given us feedback on the Covert process through various workshops, visits and lessons .
Contents
Introduction
Invasion and the Self
Welcoming Spaces
The Process
The Meditations
1. Score for a strong leaning tree
2. Score for a place with near and far vistas
3. Score for an embedded circular feature
4. Score for a missing object
5. Score for a small crossroads
6. Score for a grove of trees
7. Score for a wall with horizontal layers
8. Score for an abandoned playground
9. Score for a shallow hollow
10. Score for a blocked doorway
11. Score for a busy gridded space
12. Score for distinct side-by-side objects
13. Score for a tunnel
14. Score for a tall fence
15. Score for a dejected tree
16. Score for a public monument
17. Score for a two-toned ground surface
18. Score for the sentinels
19. Score for a standalone portal
20. Score for an ornate leaf
21. Score for an object that is stable but askew
22. Score for a small overgrown space
23. Score for a slope with a disappearing view
24. Score for a pseudo-stage
25. Score for a long high wall
26. Score for a bifurcated tree
27. Score for a neglected sculpture garden
28. Score for an isolated bench
29. Score for a pathway or line of planters
30. Score for a series of lampposts
What Bubbles Up
The Dance of Emergence
Making Your Own
Re-engaging with Place
References
Introduction
Do you ever feel that you are on a runaway train with no station stops? That you re hurtling along with no time to pause or ask important questions? That you live in a world where people regard your online presence as more important than your physical one? Have you ever felt lonely or just unsettled and then caught yourself scrambling for a cell phone or a tablet to ease that feeling? And have you noticed that satisfying such frantic urges with screen time doesn t really make anything better? Rather, it just reinforces the sense that you ve shared your feelings with an indifferent, faceless machine?
We are not the first generation to experience loneliness or a sense of alienation from others and the world. But what is different this time is that our isolation and unhappiness emerge not from distance or separation, but from intimacy, not by closing down but by opening up. The monster that generates our dependence is not a bully or a dictator, but our digitized friend. Though its servers may be built and managed by huge corporations, the digital machine is fuelled, maintained and sustained by us. We are both the producers and consumers of this monster. By feeding it with our posts, sharing with it the most thoughtful, emotional, and personal parts of ourselves, we are the ones allowing it to claim greater and greater intimacy. Instead of cherishing and cultivating our feelings and contemplations, we deliberately turn ourselves inside out for the machine.
Covert is a reminder that, despite all that, we have more control than we think. It reminds us that our whims and hopes, concerns and inspirations can be appreciated, treasured, protected and cultivated. Further, Covert prompts us to carve out the time and space to nurture that inner life, and it warns us that if we don t actively nourish and protect it, we will lose it.
In short, Covert offers a constructive path for defending and preserving ways of being in the everyday world that do not leave us under constant scrutiny. As a handbook, Covert advances a method for sidestepping or evading invasive gazes, gazes that want to know not only our purchase patterns, but also our hopes and fears, preferences and pursuits. And it does so through a highly practical process that both respects and enriches us as grounded, multidimensional beings.
To do this, Covert prioritizes the body . It highlights the body s role in our most private contemplations as well as the part the body can play in nurturing and protecting our inner creativity - insights, visions, musings and epiphanies - as they emerge from dreams and imagination into consciousness. It firmly welcomes and embraces all bodies - in whatever shape, form or ability - as the key means through which we can know both the world and ourselves. Starting from the premise that our bodies are the medium of our feelings and thoughts, this book suggests ways for us to re-integrate ourselves - emotions, ideas, fantasies, muscles, memories, bones, actions, organs, dreams - with the non -virtual world that surrounds and embraces us.
At its simplest, Covert is a collection of movement meditations , straightforward and basic physical activities that aid inner reflection. Using its exercises - done with your fingertips or your whole body, for two seconds, two minutes or two hours - Covert offers the means to seek out present, pleasurable and complex experiences that resist being reduced to a pixelated pattern or to a hashtag that gets a like from a Facebook friend.
Ultimately, Covert proposes a way to embrace our multiplicitous and connected selves, not as separate from , but as part of , the physical world that surrounds us. Joining movement, contemplative practice and the richness of place, the Covert process aims to uncover the means to withstand, and perhaps even defy, efforts to devalue the fullness of human experience. And, in defending what we are losing of ourselves, we may learn something about how we create those selves in the first place.
Invasion and the Self
In an article in the Winter 2016 issue of ROAR Magazine, Alfie Bown asked what if our digital footprints, besides revealing our desires, are also responsible for the very construction of these desires?
We have all had the experience: wondering how an ad for winter boots or sunglasses or shampoo pops up on our email sidebar after doing a search for the same item on a different device. Indeed, we are now so used to such occurrences that we rarely remark on or even notice them anymore. As digital algorithms seek deeper and deeper access to our preferences and predilections, discovering ever more ways of looping the findings back at us across multiple platforms, we surrender to their reach. Through our ever-present handheld devices, we offer up our psyches like a candy store to the retailers and information moguls alike.
But what is it that these algorithms ultimately seek? Besides the obvious - our wallets - there is a deeper penetration at work. As Mark Zuckerberg has declared, algorithms for social media mechanisms are not only or merely invested in acquiring money; rather, they are delving for a fundamental mathematical law underlying human social relationships that governs the balance of who and what we all care about . Those who create and employ the algorithms believe they can penetrate and systematically put to use our deepest fears, loves, aspirations and needs, seemingly without shame or hesitation.
And they are increasingly successful in their endeavours. Their invasion of our inner selves is a brutal affair, through which we are set apart , made quantifiable, generic, isolated and reproducible. This setting apart from ourselves and from each other takes different forms of intensity, depending on whether we are, say, refugees misrepresented on propaganda posters or privileged homeowners steeped in social status and education. Tailored to our social or cultural placement, the algorithms seek to make us all victims of various kinds of imposter syndrome by tricking us into identifying with a reduced (or unduly inflated) image of self. This carefully crafted self-image, which is measured, categorized, delimited and re-calibrated with cool efficiency for the algorithm s benefit, can make us uncertain or suspicious of (or maybe even dissatisfied by) our real selves.
Yet our analysis of this social assault needs to go deeper still. For beyond the penetration into our emotional and imaginative treasures, the invasion is now so deep that it endangers something less obviously precious, less present, less real. It threatens the very possibility of hiddenness within ourselves. As the algorithmic infiltration expands, insinuating itself into (and beyond) all thought and action, it threatens that profoundly personal nexus where our hidden hopes and desires tentatively emerge from our unconscious mind.