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Archive Books

Shadow Writing (algorithm/quipu)

Shadow Writing (algorithm/quipu)

The problem is how to begin, how to narrate the beginning, and where to situate that beginning. Maybe it’s complicated because beginnings are always selfish. At the end of it all, all histories are subtly intertwined. The problem is where to start.

If the details of the shadows of a history are broadened, the events, the characters, and the situations also vary. Thinking about where a story begins inevitably changes who is part of that story, how the story is accounted, and who counts in that story. With these variations (let’s not forget that this has to do with variations), the characters and pieces that form part of these stories will lay the foundations for how certain elements compensate for others, how they influence each other, how relationships of power are established, who has the authority to let others pass and who and what can cross. For example, materials in various amounts can pass. Mathematical knowledge can pass. But the people who produce these things may not. For this reason, this work is formulated as a gesture. The gesture of a request for hospitality. The offer of hospitality is implicit in the prerequisite of this gesture. The gesture has to do with thinking about other beginnings.

What we are referring to here are the very subtle shadows that some societies mould in others. The shadows in question are ones whose edges are very difficult to define. They have become part of the fabric of the society in which they were moulded, and are almost indistinguishable from the rest of that fabric. We cannot anticipate the final forms that we will encounter when we expand the diffuse borders of those shadows if we have only been exposed to the history that has been given to us. These shadows are full of signs that do not differentiate between past and future.

One of these many shadows is that of computation, a form of narrative that goes beyond speech. A communication made of rhythms. Computation is the accelerated expression of a reality annotated with algorithms, the totality of the world translated into numerical parameters. Human and non-human nature translated into numbers, and their possible mutual relations understood as capital to be exploited.

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