UN[dis]CRIMINATE

RITUAL TO CLEANSE NEOLIBERALISM

by Eric Souther

UN[dis]criminate encampment looks along the fault lines of NeoLiberalist ideology with tantric video-overload from video artist Eric Souther, who asks genuine questions of human attention and how it is marshalled, at a time when attention has become the gold-dust of the digital Klondike - when the fortunes made today will dictate the power concentrations of tomorrow.

Ritual To Cleanse Neoliberalism: Many ritualistic practices include sensory overload, for example, drumming, dancing, or pain. The clinical analysis of these practices tends to talk about sensory overload as a method for disrupting the cerebral processing of information and decreasing the meaningfulness of your surroundings. In Haitian Vodun, sensory overload is used to break down the self in order to be susceptible to possession. Neoliberalism and domination culture use a similar approach to initiate a form of capitalistic possession, which alters your freedom to choose, to a freedom to choose what to consume, a system that focuses on winners and losers.
Marshall McLuhan uses Edgar Allen Poe's story 'A Descent Into The Maelstrom' as a metaphor for evading the effects of media, which is the method of sensory overload that works upon us. The key for Poe's sailor evading destruction was to pay attention to Maelstrom and how it functions. Hence in my ritual I use a mantra sampled from Terence McKenna "Don't abandon yourself to amazement, pay attention, pay attention to what we're doing", an almost impossible task when being presented by a spectacle of images. If we don't abandon ourselves to amazement what can be learned?

Eric Souther is a video and new media artist who creates and explores the ritualistic spaces of media. He develops hybrid analog and digital tools for audio-visual performance, single channel video, and installations. His work has been featured nationally and internationally at venues such as the Museum of Art and Design, NYC, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY and the ART DATA LAB, Beijing. His work has been screened in The Athens Digital Arts Festival, Athens, Greece, Cronosfera Festival, Alessandria, Italy, and the Galerija 12 New Media Hub, Belgrade, Serbia. In 2016, Eric won the Juried Award for Time-Based at the international art competition ArtPrize. He received his M.F.A. in Electronic Integrated Arts from Alfred University and is currently an Associate Professor of New Media at Indiana University South Bend. www.unseensignals.com