Empires

The film and online project brings together international philosophers, scientists, artists and business leaders to give description and analysis to the contemporary moment as defined by computational tools and networks.

It states that networks are not new and have been forever with us in the evolution of our cities, trade, communications and sciences, in our relations as businesses and nation states, in the circulation of money, food, arms and our shared ecology.

Yet something has deeply changed in our experience of time, work, community, the global. Empires looks deeply to unravel how we speak to the realities of the individual and the notion of the public and public 'good' in this new world at the confluence of money, cities, computation, politics and science.

Through varied formats the hybrid work seeks out to present a layered account of the multiplicity of speeds, systems and affects interwoven and intermeshed that define today's global politics and culture.

A note on the new clip (the one on the top):
From the beginning of this project I'd wanted to include groups using new technologies to consider new forms of participation, asking and questioning what is their promise, their reality. can they constitute new kinds of actions, create a new kind of public, a new social fabric, a new politics, new forms of assembly; this within a framework and perspective of history and theory. i had spent some time over the years at 16beaver and began a conversation with them and then occupywallstreet happened, presenting a very complex event testing all theoretical assumptions and bringing a living reality to the complex of questions with which the film was engaged.

in the next chapter we'll look at algorithms, and the logic of money in computation and how these instruments have in a sense a logic and end game of their own. whereas this first part (which will play out and be much longer) has a sense of a very human dimension, perhaps our instrumentation has its very own end game.

Trailer for film, 4:04



First cut of film, 2:45:05



Clip with Occupy Wall Street footage



Clip with only academics