The Hero's Tail

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Audio-visual lecture created with Sasha Litvintseva

Performed at Plato, Ostrava, Czech Republic, November 2017

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Within the posthuman turn there is much speculation on the notion of nonhuman consciousness. The assigning of consciousness to plants, stones, or bacteria - a gesture that decentralizes human consciousness - also betrays an understanding of consciousness as something that is always already there. But was consciousness always present in humans or did it evolve through the historical coevolution of humans, technology and environments? This is the question we explore in our audio visual lecture in which we chart out a series of dispersed spatiotemporal terrains; from the steady beat of agricultural production in early states to the even steadier beat of the rave dance floor on the other side of peak energy. Shifting scales and coordinates we pose a series of questions: How does consciousness link to energy consumption and production? Could one think of consciousness in economic terms: a consciousness surplus or deficit, a consciousness GDP?