The 23rd Chaos Communications Congress, a 4-day data-rich and pioneering geek-social convergence in Berlin is off and running as of Today. We have put out our feelers to catch some reports, and while we’re at it we’re going to reflect a bit about our socio-impressions and perspective-trawls from #22. Meanwhile here’s 23c3’s deep wiki’d resource base… and blogger’s page. cont… Not much up on these blogs yet as we quikly surfed em… what’s up?? isn’t anybody drinking mate and tweaking til dawn?

We scooped a treasure chest of musika (+media) gems on the eastern trails, some of which may not be landing here ( leftcoast) for several months… so here’s a list, new and old, from the 4 corners, ESSENTIAL MUSIC , nevermind looking back on top ten lists from 2006, we’re gearing up for an XL 2007! And We’ll be continuing to update ( and link) as soon we can absorb and process all the new additions : Nomad Sound System (not yet released)

Jan Svankmajer’s new film Lunacy is Not the appropriate film to take your lover unless s/he has a penchant for tickling life’s underbellies under a microscope and reads stacks of critical theory like a psycho-sexualized addict with a possession for pricking the entire civilized bubble which restrains us from encountering the flood of ecstatic, unraveling and convulsive truths. to be cont. …ah there’s so much to disentangle from that weird nite and heaped on top of the whole kulture-shock of being back in the belly o the beastie… but this speech was absorbed the day of landing, and resonates with so much that needs to transpire in 2007 : Sean Penn’s speech upon receiving the Christopher Reeve 1st amendment award.

The first night of the re-land upon the shores of the long-lost Leftcoast, our Happy Feet Travels Compa brought us out to The SantaCon Party being held at Cafe Du Nord. …where Scott Beale’s “You’d Better Watch Out: Portland SantaCon ‘96″ was pulled out of the old VHS drawer ( Neeeeds Digitizing! )… and… revealing the 1st year Santarchy invaded “foreign soil” or should we say soiled the foreign state. Back in 96, some 2oo Santas from mostly the Bay Area loaded up at SFO and headed for PDX… and after a number of inebriated + dada digressions finally came around to their objective to enter a shopping mall which had been pre-fortified by riot-geared cops unprepared to comprehend what Santa species had come to eat their bot brains for breakfast.

dj Shazam dropped by the Transmigration show, and asked if we’d bring some beats on board for an event tomorrow nite at ZMF… A pretty wicked show, featuring one of Shazam’s projects called Nomad Sound System, who are just about to drop a next level fusion cd featuring input from Algeria, Tunisia, Japan, and Germany , 5 musicians weaving together a diversity of influences such as Asian Dub Foundation, Rai and Berber riffs … a sweaty mix of the global brotherhood without borders.

XL Terrestrials will land at the Zentrale Randlage THIS Wednesday :: 13.12.06 :: 20: 00h sharp :: Schönhauser Allee 172, Berlin :: U2 Senefelderplatz Special guests of Media Decompression Collective ( the Berlin branch, also opening minds in Toledo, Ohio … since 1§§6?? ), who program regularly at this fine “newer” venue for experimental music and programming for the those who regularly test the outer limits. We’ll post a more detailed description of this exciting collaboration just as soon we get our bags unpacked, catch up on that dreadful sleeping habit, make the rounds of dropping flyers on a Berlin Saturday nite from our XLT fleet of droid helicopters, and stop those damn horizontal lines spilling out of control on our u-tubed frames.

Happy Birthday Possible Worlds!!! Check the site for events running from Dec 8-10 to celebrate … And support the expanding network of Possible Worlds… U TOO can get hosted alongside some great communities that are at the forefront of social pio-bio-geo-neering for sustainable futures!! And need we mention they are our favorite server for all things XL Terrestrial !!

There seems to be something in the sensual waters of the current Viennese school that will not take the prevalent techno-fascisms lying down. There is heavy resistance full with humor and full-on attack, at least as far as museum sectors can allow for any serious public discourse and deconstructions. Exhibition and forums take place in Wien’s institutional culture epicenter here in Wien known as the Museums Quartier. Roböexotica is the 8th gathering of techies, futurists and jammers putting the spin on the man-machine curve which might otherwise whisk humanity into the hyper-drive envelopes of business-as-usual and the discarnate dystopias with their irreversible price-tag infrastructures.

XLTs are still on the road, passing thru Austria where we will drop in on a project called Roboexotica in Wien. At first this looked like some deranged transhumanist party and then we read in V. Vale`s newsletter ( ReSearch ) a little more clearly into its irony: “Roboexotica 2006 : What is it all about? It’s an annual festival where philosophers, scientists, researchers, computer geeks and artists from all over the world talk about/build “cocktail robots” and discuss technological innovation, futurology and science fiction.

Vít Šisler , a PhD candidate of the Institute of Information studies at the Charles University, who writes articles for Umelec arts magazine, such as this unusual and challenging piece on the Digital Intifada and Afkar Media will be one the speakers for an arts and politics seminar in Prague on Nov.29th , just one part of the exhibition called Czechpoint, at the NOD/Roxy in Prague, combining lectures, performances, graphic arts and screenings… including our own TOC 2.1 mass psychomedia analysis and presentation wednesday night.

The XL Terrestrials presented Transmigration Of Cinema at the Nepokoreni Grad 2006 festival, which means “Unconquered Town”, a weeklong series of events hosted by the Domachi cultural organiization in Karlovac, an unusual town just an hour southeast of Zagreb, originally built as a star-shaped fortress. There’s a number of empty buildings in the town due in part to work-migration to the capital Zagreb, and a number of them are former military spaces. The festival addresses the themes of reclaiming space for cultural productivity and education, and the Domachi crew is at the heart of this movement.

Perhaps an impossible act to follow, but nevertheless an uncanny preface to our XLTs TOC 2.1 presentation on Friday (see previous post below re: tour). “The Pervert’s Guide To Cinema” , a 3-part document series premiered on More4 (tv) in the UK in August, and opened at the London ICA later in October. And it played here in Zagreb at Mama ( an invaluable public space media lab with an extraordinary grasp on the new media landscape, but more on that later ) on Nov.

XL Terrestrials may be detourning the theater near YOU, check below for upcoming dates. With all sorts of added new clips, the XLTs leave for Zagreb this weekend for a short Balkan visitation, and then work our way up to the Czechpoint arts+politics festival/exhibition in Prague, meet up with half of the extraordinary Liebidow.de media spinsters in Stuttgart, and then try to squeeze in some Berlin dates before we head for the Lost Leftcoast. What’s NEW: Thanks to a plethora of active media organisms in the Berlinopolis, we’ve got profound new materials to recombinate, to re-awaken your social + political higher consciousness and will to ACT.

The new hit “Rumy plays Babylon” was the timely sequel to “Beyond the Valley of the Republicrats”. And there was a line all the way around the block of humanitarian rights organizations who are more than ready to tell the courts all the nauseating details of the atrocities in this made-for-tv war against civilized society in general, arabs and muslims in particular. Oh so strange that no one wants to distribute this blockbuster thriller. Have you read any reviews about it in Your spineless and negligent corporate media outlets?

A couple weeks ago the Babylon Mitte Kino was host to Matthew Barney. Today it’s some major human rights NGOs which include RAV.de, Internationale Liga fuer Menschenrechte (FIDH) , and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) to discuss war crimes proceedings against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and others. Should be some astounding moments in the history of law and the future of civilization. Reports coming soon. Program in german below. Michael Ratner (CCR) and the ex-general and commander of the military police in Iraq, Janis Karpinski attending.

The XL Terrestrials project heads to Croatia in 2 weeks, and one of the stops will be MAMA in Zagreb. Happened to catch a great linked essay on their site that Zizek presented at Columbia in 2003, called Too Much Democracy? Well not one of his best actually, but there are some ingenious lines that are highly appropriate to (S)election day in the US. “ “Democracy” means that, whatever electoral manipulation took place, every political agent will unconditionally respect the results.

Just received 2 emails regarding NYC Indymedia journalist Brad Will being shot by paramilitaries in Oaxaca, and been searching the international media for this breaking news, and shocked that there is so little appearing. Deep gratitude to Indymedia for covering these very tense events in Mexico so thoroughly and deep respects to Brad Will for being on the front lines to bear witness. As for the rest of the media : WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU ?!! Just a few hours earlier the BBC had a pathetic and spineless story about Vicente Fox’s need to restore order and has already been re-edited/over-written, but still the 3 deaths, one of which is a journalist, remains practically a footnote.

Last nite we went to see Matthew Barney present films for a program entitled All in the Present Must Be Transformed: Matthew Barney and Joseph Beuys at the aptly named theater Babylon Mitte. Barney is in town for a new exhibition called Heal the Knive that Cuts the Wound: Matthew Barney and Joseph Beuys opening this weekend at the Deustche Guggenheim, which equals Deutsche Bank + Guggenheim Museum attempting to get radical and naughty with the superstar of fin de siecle cinema and “plastic shamanics” and art infiltrations, but what does it actually look like to poke oneself in The Eye of The Spectacle?

Well, i suppose we should be a little tidier in our archival trails, this is now the 3rd visible Transmigration of Cinema (TOC) remix version posted here cause we keep re-arranging the directives for our next round of touring in November… and this text for the Prague exhibition at the NOD gallery has been a challenge. And it seems useful to use the podopolog for thinking aloud, even if it hasn’t yet developed into a forum as yet. As we were trying to come up with that ursprung and backround for the XLTs … we were reminded of that strange, intense beginning, when the concept arose from a mix of deep personal changes, outrage, and despair.

[for arts and politics seminar in Prague beginning November 28 , called “Czechpoint”. will have more info in the coming weeks or feel free to contact us for more details. ] In legal language of nation-states, an alien is a person who is not a native or naturalized citizen of the land where they are found. And to stay or work within a country’s borders aliens may need special immigration documents or permits that authorize them to do so. Then at the opposite end of the vocabulary and ontological spectrum there are those regions where poetry reigns with anything from rhythmic transcendance to out-stretched tentacles of personal and crystallized meaning where our “papers” and our “i.

expect a string of short attention span versions… so we have collected a bunch of new media ecology and online diagnosis threads, but with all kinds of glitches in the air … like a laptop battery attached to a temporary I.V. - drip … yes the little apple “podmosis” brain suffered a concussion. we had a near catastrophe with short circuit - kurzschluss - at our last russen disco gig and it has knocked out some internal hardware… minor damage in the long run but while she sits in the sling … it has added to the toll of a grey week … that has wrapped itself around an autumn full moon, which makes everything appear like a hangover thru a fisheye lens … like trying to look In through the peephole to see what strangers are standing behind the door holding the key to Your office or home or future.

We have been in the lab this week trying to come up with a remix of Transmigration of Cinema to present at some venues and festivals coming up in November and beyond. One scenario in particlar is for a Czech exhibition and festival of political art which will explore “checkpoints” - those places where “an inspection or investigation is performed” - fueled by the contexts of geograhphical and political borders, points of exchange, and points of exclusion, “a selectively-permeable membrane between regimes, between economics, between beliefs”.

Dear Mr. Schlingensief, Your work would make an incredible antidote to the current cultural maladies in the USSA. Should you ever venture into That arena cloaked in your new semiotic art amidst the Broadway of wolves, ( think: Beuys NYC gallery debut ) , we have 3 working titles for you to consider: The ABCs OF DISNEYWELTSCHMERZ 2. THE ASSASSINATION OF THE TV EVANGELIST’S INTERNET PROVIDER 3. XL TERRESTRIALS, ALL U CAN EAT ! ( the XLTs are accumulating a number of anti-scripts for art upgrades , please feel free to contact us for trial downloads ) … and maybe we can get Rev.

The new Berlin theater experience from Christoph Schlingensief, the madly engaged director of electroshock cinema therapy experiments like Menu Total and The German Chainsaw Massacre, is built upon a revolving stage which beckons the audience to come for a ride into a blender of bloody good topics ranging from the overplayed and unresolved dead-end icon Lady Di to the never-made-for-Tv dramatization/hallucinations to Allan Kaprow, the american artist who gave birth to 60’s Happenings. There’s plenty more incompatible and expansive topics thrown in to ensure your personal time code and all plot lines are sufficiently scrambled so that we might each adjust our individual and uniquely human perceptions for maximum free associations.

Freitag, 29.09.2006 Soliparty… Supa-DružbaR!!! Wir tanzen euch auf dem Dach herum - fuer queere Verhaeltnisse! Soli für: Rene - seit dem CSD in Polen inhaftiert; Leinestrasse - Prozesskostensoli wegen der gewaltsamen Räumung einer Party + eine antirassistische Hochzeit. 2 dance floors: (elektro-)pop, russkaja diskoteka. (dj podski from the ussa … spielt 22:30…und den noch viel mehr djs bis ?? … 4 uhr ??) ( dear eric , if yur reading this hope ya don’t mind yur images - w/o acknowledgment - used once again for great causes… it wasn’t me : )

The opening night of Radio Revolten in Halle, with the Halle belltower, Radio Worm (Rotterdam) and Nordpol Ziguener ( “the northpole gypsy” , Berlin ). There’s daily programming for this festival, but a quik reminder if u haven’t checked the earlier entry ( below)… The main conference event is Oct. 4 and 5.

Read the whole story at : http://indybay.org/newsitems/2006/09/20/18312766.php and the interview on Democracy Now here: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/15/1342254 … THIS IS A CRITICAL STORY regarding the new climate for journalists in the USSA. …but please , i recommend that Judith Miller’s message be used for pin-the-tail on the embedded donkey-journalist ! And if you need backround for That story read here: http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn08182003.html … it is one of Alexander Cockburn’s high-flying counterpunches that lays the entire Spineless + Warmongering NY Times flat on the mat.

Radio Revolten Festival in Halle, Germany Sept.20- Oct.21, 2006 “RR showcases installations, performances, and 0n-air projects as models of experimental radio cultures within a social context. The artistic works concern themselves primarily with the future of the medium of radio. ” News and Reports coming soon. For now, check the extensive program here: http://www.radiorevolten.radiocorax.de/ From Chantal Dumas and Mario Gauthier’s installation project, “Petite métaphysique de la radio ou la chambre d’à coté” …” Referring to philosophers as Guy Debord and Brice Parain, the installation deals with our daily use of the medium and its impact on reality reflecting on how the transindividual perception of the medium constantly changes.

Need more xl terrestrial perspective to help u escape this very bad film u might happen to be in right Now?? … Transmigration of Cinema ( and summer tour overview) article featured here: http://othercinema.com/mainframe.html Ah and previous O.zine #10 has an amazing interview with Sam Green ( director of Weather Underground) by David Cox. AND …Holy $%^#@! don’t miss Othercinema’s incredible new season at ATA in San Francisco… every Saturday… see calendar here: http://othercinema.com/s06frame.htm

This year’s Wizard of Os conference theme is “Information Freedom Rules”. See Reports Below. Speakers include: Lawrence Lessig, Yochai Benkler , Volker Grassmuck and a whole host Of Brazillian free culture reps , including Fernanda Weiden ( Founder of Women Free Software Project in Brazil), Felipe Fonseca ( MetaReciclagem, Sao Paolo) and the MimoSa project ( Sao Paolo ), etc, etc. See the the full program here: http://wizards-of-os.org Berliner Orgs like Tesla and C-base naturally on hand / dabei… WOS4 Report #1:

Context: Dropping Knowledge.org (dk), an international non-profit organization based primarily in Germany ( In the U.S., dk is a project of the Tides Center ), gathers 112 thinkers, artists, writers, scientists, social entrepreneurs, philosophers and humanitarians from around the world on September 9th, 2006 in Berlin to answer 100 questions in an experimental forum. Set upon an historically loaded stage, Dropping Knowledge has constructed the world’s largest (non-governmental) roundtable at Bebelplatz in Berlin Mitte (the central district). Less than half a kilometer from the Brandenburg Gate which only 17 years ago was the dividing line between East and West Germany and the east and west political “operating systems” following WW II, this square, lying between the State Opera house and the Humboldt University, is the infamous location where books were burned during the most reported, documented and referenced fascist regime of modern times.

A small detour, cultural sponge activities abound in the B-metropolis, and we must report… And as I had just mentioned this new Quay Brother’s film to a few friends, lo and behold, I look up at the Hackesher Hof marquee and there it Is… playing already in Germany… the synchro-timer tics, the parallels are in high-gear, and we have begun sketches for XL Terrestrial poster # 3, but more on that later. This Terry Gilliam! production of the Quay’s 2nd feature turns our mechanisms a few more notches counterclockwise to dreamward unravellings.

Reward: $00.99 For the XL Terrestrial’s top secret and highly experimental 2-D glasses and Monogoggles, lost somewhere between Bratislava and Berlin… Hurry we’ve got a show 2nite at Club der Polnische Versager ! Danger: Do Not Try These At Home ! www.polnischeversager.de …And don’t miss the opening at Pigasus Gallery just next door. And/or take a tour and support the polish poster otherworlds: www.pigasus-gallery.de i.e. This one from the astounding work of Franciszek Starowieyski.

Liebe arts and active organisms, We are finally getting around to sending out an XL Terrestrials newsletter. ( this will NOT be a frequent spam-tentacle invading yur in-boxes, but apologies if this txt is one more unrelated eyesore in these already over-cubicled days. Please drop us a line if you would like us to cease all communications, with the subject : Dearest org, Baszd Meg ! ) Onto the Transmigration News : First off, let me THANK ALL the InGENious social networkers, arts + activist species, and fellow autonomous Orgs that have assisted, hosted, and fed us ( spiritually, artisticly and gastronomicly ) on the path !

Nearly full circle, I’ve landed back in Berlin, where the compass magnet gravitates to somewhere far east of Rosa Luxembourg Platz ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Luxemburg ) where freezones are never really captured, and the streets do not spell out revolutionary ghosts as failed bloody squares jammed into round history-winner holes, but living breathing shifting psycho-geography and bodies that dip and dive into sun or shadows drinking milch kaffees along the pock-marked streets that are like rivers on fire… war by day and love by night.

Letne Dielne ( summer open academy ) in Bratislava has 4 more days to go. Already some high-level uploads+downloads- practical and theoretical- have occurred since I arrived on Sunday. Pure Data (a popular open source software for sound and visual that is derived from Max, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max/MSP ) presentations reveal a bottomless barrel full of digital possibilities for the mathematically-engaged artist. 2 locals, Peter Gonda and Daniel Toth, have been guiding workshops for 4 consecutive days. And Peter showed me a beautiful pure data-designed network map, one of the most sophisticated i have yet seen with all kinds of statistical info and “net logic” as you mouse over the various nodes.

Just hyperspaced from one end to the other, in the galaxy spectrum of activism, from Ecotopia – the annual eco-active euro gathering- to 13m3.sk – a Bratislava media lab in autonomous e-summer academy mode. From the rural retreat of Zajezova , the homebase of eco-conscious workshops amidst a tiny network/collective of sustainable farmers in the hills of southern Slovakia to the buzzing tech-tronic geekdom built upon the post-modern ruins of a cluster of semi-empty buildings, just behind a mega-shopping complex on the outskirts of this capital cityscape.

the faux squat aesthetic, but nevertheless a few more happy heads to spin … and even a maria peszek fan from poland wanting to trade some (polish) music links, stay tune.

quik inserts from the drunken boat… sailing up river towards ecotopia2006.org today… into the mountains NETless for nearly a week… my addicted exo-neurals are already shaking with a mix of fear and elation…. escape? to what? what is outside the continuous nodule surf ? … that relentless crashing sound on the beach of inland synapses. How on earth will i monitor myself without the apparatae and inflamed e-appendices… my life reduced to a fleshy footnote amongst hay and chickens, barking dogs and peeeople.

everywhere u turn the buda-p skyline beholds a flowering poppy pod from a place in time that must have been the opiate treffpunkt ( meeting place ) at the turn of the century, turn of the fortune’s wheel, turn of the kaleidescopes, turn to the page… where earth meets a brewing mauve and shimmering orange dusk.

P.Wee: szia , greetz from the dense urban chaos of bpest A-Zee: still in bpest P.Wee: leave 2morrow for the ecoptopia2006 A-Zee: I thought for sure you’ve moved A-Zee: good A-Zee: finally some developments A-Zee: action P.Wee: ya got a little snagged , but a good snag, we got good anarcho-guides here showing us the blade-runner backdoors of the austro-hungarian relic-metropolis P.Wee: we had a pretty good show here…though a little too distracted n drunk crowd to fully absorb… P.Wee: and we are hanging with some

incredible tales in momiano/momjan, a tiny town in istria just near the border of slovenia. we teamed up with the liebidow crew, a pair of wicked performance tricksters with the touch of the clown sha-wo-man archetype. wild coincidences abound: they are also headed to budapest and they have a show that is in fact a kind of transmigration of cinema… it is living (media) theater that stirs up the consciousness with a big kitchen spoon, with all the potential to take giant chunks out of the empire trance and leave the bones of boredom and passivity far behind them.

OK, why not some pratical info ?? like Tour news: i still cant find apostrophes on a croatian keyboard, but with that being the worst of our problems i think we could say the jammer guardians are looking after us…and so many inspring people along the trail are making our journey an easy coast down a swift river. In fact, Possible Worlds connected us to an ingenious and synchronous festival just an hour north of where we are based, and the theme is BORDERS.

“Jako Was A German SS and Sako Was My Japanese Benefactor” or ” My Personal Psychosis Will Be In The End Untranslatable ” … Assam: podinsky Assam: goot morgan WE-pod: oi, greetz from beograd ( again ) Assam: again? Assam: me and tory watched the net WE: loop, just returned from transylvania, got fang marks to prove it… no just kidding , fantastic peeps/hosts ! WE: loop. just … Assam: I thought you were going forward… not back Assam: something about a tour

” Nicholson Schmicholson Can Eat His Big Hollywood Homonculus ” We: yo assam, what up? Sent at 1:28 PM on Friday Assam: what up what up ! Sent at 1:31 PM on Friday We: im at a workshop on sound tools… using things like Jack ? ardour? Assam: jack? nicholson? We: um its all here, if yur interested in the geeky details… im only half-absorbing, url coming… http://www.burundi.sk/monoskop/index.php/SoundWorkshop Sent at 1:34 PM on Friday We: nicholson schmicholson can eat his big hollywood homunculus

Already doing shows in Croatia, but just now getting a chance to put up images from the Transylvania experiences. Incredible street art group called The Playground had some fantastic stencils around the town. Some overtly political, like the references to the toxic spill at the Rosa Montana mine, and “Vlad for President 2004″ referencing the Count that spawned the legend of Dracula, who had a penchant for impaling his enemies. While that’s the story that often comes to mind first when anyone mentions Transylvania, the warm hospitality and poetic contemplation of the Romanians is much more what one can expect to encounter in the region.

It was a little difficult for online access during the Transylvanian part of the tour, so now that i am in Zagreb and on my way to the coast for a multimedia fest with a variety of radio and tactical media workshops ( see: http://mmkamp.org/ ) , i hope that i will be able to plog more frequently and describe the fantastic encounters in Romania. And fotos to upload…yep. what’s up with this %#$ wordpress upload … a task to unravel tomorrow.

Yes, we’ve reached Videodrome levels in the Magic Geekdom ( sitting in the park at Ferenc Liszt Ter jonesing for available Wi-Fi), but i might mention that this is hardly a Magyar epidemic, where they still gather in public space to be in the company of tangible friends til dawn. So the lo-tekker that I am still can’t bring this wiley wordpress byte-slop to heed my calls… that is, no images yet, but nevermind that… it’s called WORDpress right and we might as well reJoyce in the plog as Burroughsian virus.

Ok, here it is … I’m diving into the XL terrestrials plog , having landed in the east blok and ready to rip. 2nd day in Budapest and fresh from The House Of Terror exhibition on Andrassy Ut, where both the Nazis and the Soviet Union set up their little shop of oppression. This building was HQ for the conquering of body, mind and spirit of the Hungarian people. Now turned into a museum and Haunted Mansion FOR REAL : Enough documentation and emotions to fill the wordpress world for weeks to come, but hey there’s no time for that here cause there are new systems of oppression needing urgent deconstructions and arts in action and i’m supposed to premiere my Next Level plans next week and I got plenty to tweak there.