Postmodernism has been a wonderful tool for deconstructing power structures but it has limitations. The Koch brothers who work for the oil companies are perfectly comfortable deconstructing science and replacing it with a new anti-evolution pro-Christian structure. They obviously believe in science as it is the tool they use to drill their oil. We can aim our deconstructive lens at such power structures and it is very useful.
CatArmy has used direct action such as seed bombing to make attempts to heal Gaia. We threw and buried 200 seed bombs from Dayton Ohio to Miami Az to curate CatArmy II (CatArmy becomes a hyperobject). I put forth the question to CatQueen Lova Delis, “Is there such a thing as Bee Karma?”, while we were doing this, and we were visited by some bees soon after. I can relate this sort of experience to Synchronicity, which has mystical and psychological implications. Relating this to you has the purpose of forming solidarity, and hopefully encouraging many others to partake in such activities. In Thelemic philosophy whether this experience is mystical or psychological would be completely up to the individual, and allows for skepticism without losing solidarity, behind the importance of our visitation. Now it’s not important whether or not you believe in Thelemic philosophy to connect with the synchronicity. We could deconstruct Crowley or Jung as easily as I deconstructed the Koch brothers. In late Postmodernism we find the only truth to be skepticism. Then what do we do with all the scientific data that proves global warming is real? Timothy Morton has a good solution for this, which is to say that when we have a massive amount of data about something we can call it a hyperobject, that is to say something that effects so many things, that is can be seen as real. I’m postmodernism there is a post-kantian tendency to turn everything into a sign without its own substance. The philosophy of Timothy Morton, Object Oriented Ontology, doesn’t deny the usefulness of deconstruction, but seeks to aim it at postmodernism’s tendency to make the the observer real and see both the oil company and the bees as just a sign. This anthropocentric perspective has an effect, which is global warming. There is an abjectness to this situation which leave this almost god like observer, actually powerless to cause change. The bees that visited us were a sign of a more massively distributed hyperobject of Bees, that is very real. Members of CatArmy have reported “CatArmy Miracles” in which they have seen a cloud shaped like a cat etc. These moments point to something larger, and create solidarity among our members. Whether this is psychological or metaphysical is of no consequence, to the building of our community. These kind of incidents have created a situation, where CatArmy has built an international following so massive, as to do what would otherwise be impossible. Our goal is to use that international following to create a self sustaining community similar to Black Mountain College at MiamiArtWorks. The owner of MiamiArtWorks is Michael 23 and we are in solidarity with his hopes of turning an old mining town into a self sustaining community with the six building he bought. There is plans to erect green houses on roofs, have a makers space, restore apartments, and open a grocery store. The gallery we showed in has a Communal space upstairs and is a restored jewelry store. Black Mountain College was a communally structured school that created the American Avant-garde.
Another interesting perspective on postmodernism is the altermodernist ideas of Bruno Latour. He encourages new forms of deconstruction from artists. He as asked that artists aim their deconstructive lens at Splendor, a notion that we are removed from some magnificent nature, “out there”. He has also asked that we re-examine an old model between “land” and “progress”. Land was connected to nationalism and worse patriotism. Progress was associated with a Cartesian model of the earth that gave humans the idea their was a lot more room on the earth. He suggests a possible third attractor to be Gaia. The Gaia model describes life as a thin layer of symbiosis that reacts to what we do to it. Factories lead to storms, flowers lead to Bees. This model predicts natural disasters, as a response from a living system, with far more accuracy than the global model. CatArmy seeks positive symbiosis with Gaia.
