When Neil Postman used to analyze the Media Ecology and the Technopoly he’d say that we were becoming heavily wired for a catastrophic excess of solutions to problems that didn’t previously exist, and that even our language for expressing the new social complexities was migrating into forms more groomed for pushing hair products. Then as the Age of Biotech was just beginning to get us into slippery-slope wetware re-designed it quickly went molecular, so that the Ick Factor became a little too abstract to alarm or nauseate the uninitiated citizen/human.

Somewhat surprising and very unfortunate for US audiences that nearly 2 years after winning best documentary at the SF International, no one’s picked this film up for cinema or dvd distribution, but it’s available from their own site. Czech Dream makes a highly instructional piece for pulling back the shabby curtains on mass media, advertising firms, and the hypermarketed every-Man in a way that reveals the sausage-making of manipulative campaigns and should spawn a new wave of pranking collision-course consumerisms. And here we get a taste of the east-block currently undergoing the high-speed colonization “upgrades” to shopping-mall democracy.

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.