Author: John Cussans

Artist, Writer, Researcher and Educator
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Financial Zombie Apocalypse

‘The frozen limbo-state of durable unsustainability is the new normal (which will last until it doesn’t). The pop cultural expression is zombie apocalypse, a shambling, undying state of endlessly prolonged decomposition.’ – Nick Land Suspended Animation (pt.3)

Here is a typically brilliant article on contemporary zombie economics by the inimitable Nick Land, the third of four on the theme of ‘durable unsustainability’ from his Urban Futures blog. Between 1987 and 2007 Nick Land journeyed further into the inhuman heart of cybercapitalist darkness than any being before or since. His terrifying and ruinously infectious philosophical writings from this period have recently been compiled by Urbanomic into a highly recommended collection entitled Fanged Noumena. A courageous and impressive editorial task indeed. Respect goes out to the editors Robin Mackay and Ray Brassier for this important and timely work.

And great to see Nick back at the sharp end of What is (Really) Going On again…

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UK Health Minister slams Zombie Petitioners

In a recent exchange in the house of commons earlier this week Tory Health Minister Simon Burns accused his opposition spokesperson of  “joining the ranks of organizations like 38 Degrees who are frightening people and getting them almost zombie-like to send in emails”.

In an open letter which has receive over the 80,000 signatures 38 Degrees responded:

“Yesterday Health Minister Simon Burns compared 38 Degrees members to zombies – for emailing our own MPs about risks to the NHS!

Let’s stand together to show Mr Burns that we’re citizens, not zombies. If thousands of us sign an open letter standing up for our right to be heard, we can publish it as an advert in a national newspaper and deliver it to Mr Burns personally in his constituency.”

Citizens not Subjects: Zombie Protesters March on the Banks from Occupylsx, Halloween 2011
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‘Télémaque in Marmelade’ Talk at X Marks the Bökship


I will be giving a talk ‘Télémaque in Marmelade’ at the launch of a volume of new works by ARTicle press at Unit 3, 210 Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9N on Saturday 3rd December 2011 at 6.45 pm.

This presentation will be in preparation for the talk I will give at the 2nd  Ghetto Biennale in December. It tells the story of how Vodou coincided with Mesmerism in pre-Revolutionary Haiti and the implications of this encounter for future representation of Haiti and Vodou in Western popular culture. The presentation will also be touching on the topic of paranoid critical theory.

Here’s some information about the new publications:

The five volumes address the relationship of art, performance, art writing and knowledge, as well as exploring art as counter-knowledge or a means to counter knowledge. The volumes contain essays, art works, illustrations, documentation of performances and diagrams.

‘Performance Fictions’ – edited by David Burrows with contributions from Sadie Plant, John Cussans, Simon O’Sullivan, Pil and Galia Kollectiv and David Burrows.

‘Barefoot in the Head’ – edited by John Russell, Alun Rowlands and Mark Beasley with contributions from the editors.

‘Performing/Knowing’ – edited by Gavin Butt with contributions from Aaron Williamson, Kate Love, Oreet Ashery and Hugo Glendinning, Adrian Heathfield & Tim Etchells.

‘Materiality of Theory’ – contributions from Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield, Benoît Maire and Marcus Steinweg.

‘Who is this who is coming?’ – edited by Maria Fusco with contributions from Alexandre Singh, Craig Martin, Jennifer Higgie, George Clark & Beatrice Gibson, Giles Eldridge and Maria Fusco.

Series editor David Burrows. Price £8.00. Books can be ordered from http://www.centralbooks.com Artist’s films, relating to the publications, will also be screened. For more info about the launch and talk contact bokship@googlemail.com or d.burrows@ucl.ac.uk

Article Press, School of Art, BIAD, Birmingham City University, Margaret Street, B3 3BX. Editor of Article Press Henry Rogers – henry.rogers@bcu.ac.uk

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Grand Rue/Atis Rezistans on Anthony Bourdain’s ‘No Reservations’

American celebrity travel chef Anthony Bourdain recently traveled to Haiti for his t.v. show ‘No Reservations’. During his time in Haiti Sean Penn introduced him to the artists of Grand Rue (though they don’t get name checked).

“A New York Times photograph of a smiling Haitian merchant” Penn explains, “doesn’t speak the story of what’s going on inside these people. There’s a place that’s downtown, in the most devastated part of Port-au-Prince, earthquake wise, rubble still all over the place, and you go into the catacombs, into the kind of slum area where they work, and they’re mostly working outside, some of their studios are inside these concrete structures, and there’s incredible stuff. You’d think it was representative of post-earthquake Haiti. Bodies broken apart, nails in mouths, using pieces of a baby doll. Poverty makes people feel broken apart like in an earthquake in the first place. So that’s been the constant earthquake in this country.”

The video can be seen here. The sequence in Grand Rue begins about seven minutes in.

The show also includes an interview with Richard Morse, proprietor of the Hotel Oloffson.

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Global Data Map of Zombies

A group of researchers from the Oxford Internet Institute have recently mapped the global distribution of content on Google Maps containing the word ‘Zombie’. Interestingly the word does not occur in Haiti. The closest place is Puerto Rico, with the lowest level incidence of references. The zombie search epicenters seem to be in the metropolitan areas of the US and Western Europe. A full resolution image of the map can be found here: Mapping zombies.

Although this zombie map is most explicitly relevant for Zonbi Diaspora (the name of which was changed recently from ‘Zombie’ to ‘Zonbi’ for reasons I will explain later), some of the other maps on the ‘Visualizing Data’ site have more implicit value in terms of the Ghetto Biennale and the work of Tele Geto. The visualization of the user-generated ‘georeferenced’ content on the internet shows the dominance of material from the USA and Canada and the relatively small amount generated in Latin American and the Caribbean. The Internet Penetration, Literacy and Gender and Location of Academic Knowledge visualizations gives us a background story. What they indicate is a clear information-knowledge imbalance which is amplified by the internet.

An underlying assumption of Zonbi Diaspora is that the migration of the zonbi/zombie figure from pre-slavery West Africa to contemporary zombie films followed paths which coincided with the evolution of communications media. The transition from a folkloric Haitian legend to a ghoulish horror figure coincided with the convergence of exotic western travel literature, sensationalist newspaper reporting and early cinema. This is not the whole story. But the informational-mediatic dimension of the story is fundamental here.

I contacted Mark Graham, one of the creators of the map and asked him why he had chosen to plot the word ‘zombie’? What was the background for this choice?

‘I guess just a small obsession with zombies that I have. Together with Matt Zook and Taylor Shelton, I’ve also co-authored a chapter on zombies that should be out in a book called ‘Zombies in the Academy’ next year’.

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Haiti Wikileaks – The US ‘Goldrush’ After the 2010 Earthquake


Here is a recent bulletin from Democracy Now in which Dan Coughlin and Haïti Liberté editor Kim Ives discuss recent US intervention in Haiti. It includes exposes about how the Haitian elite and business class tried to use Haiti’s police force as their own private armies after the ousting of President Aristide in 2004, how the US, the EU and the UN supported recent elections in full knowledge of the unfair exclusion of the Lavalas party, and how US contractors worked aggressively with the US Embassy to block a minimum wage increase for Haitian ‘assembly zone’ workers. Amy Goodman will be chairing the conversation between Julian Assange and Slavoj Žižek which will take place in London on July 2nd. This discussion will be broadcast at Democracy Now.

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Tele Geto: One Year Anniversary

Here is an excellent video by Tele Geto interviewing a Vodou priest and Christian priest during their memorial ceremonies for the one year anniversary of the earthquake. And here is a very inspiring short film called Dandine from the Global Nomads Group. And from the same source  here is a short video about Haitian Vodou which includes an interview with Max Beauvoir, the ‘Official Head of Haitian Vodou’, who makes some very pertinent comments – in terms of the general orientation of this blog-  about the effects of Hollywood ‘Voodoo’ on Haitian Vodou.

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Art, Possession and The Revolutionary Unconscious

Below is an illustrated transcript of a lecture I recently gave at the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm as part of the Xism show and ‘Pig Party’ event curated by Roberto Peyre to coincide with a major Vodou exhibition currently taking place there. I will be writing about the Vodou show and the discussion surrounding it in further posts. I will also post a transcript of the lecture I gave two days later as part of the ‘Sacred Matter and Secular Frames’ symposium organized by Lotten Gustafsson, Curator at the Museum of Ethnography and the National Museum of World Culture. Continue reading “Art, Possession and The Revolutionary Unconscious”