Barthes neutrality … Laozi 無爲 Wúwèi

To record an exchange from PSF

Muindi: In light of our talk about institutions that play the role of neutral facilitator in geopolitics and individuals who play the role of neutral facilitators in games and play scenarios, I wanted to share with you all some quotations from Roland Barthes' lectures on The Neutral, a book which I am very, very fond of and that I think would make great reading for the PSF group, alongside his lectures on How to Live Together. I send this because I think that Roland Barthes has a lovely way of talking about neutral party as a passionate figure rather than a dispassionate one. What's more, Barthes phrase "outplay the paradigm" (rather than "playing into the paradigm") could be a very useful phase to empower a facilitator within the context of types of games and play scenarios that we were discussing. (edited) 
Untitled document (3).jpg


In a related timbre, Stefano Franchi, Niklas Damiris, and Helga Wild wrote a deep book on Passivity, which exists only as an unpublished ms.  A source for these diverse Western turns away from modernity: Bathes,  passivity, Heidegger’s standing in reserve, and Merleau-Ponty’s notion of constitution is Laozi’s Daodejing.  Here’s an introduction by Steve Coutinho to the daoist concept of wúwèi:

PSF germ bank from Feb 1

Dear Prototyping Social Forms folks,

Here's the recording (and transcript) of the most recent PSF, where we heard from Teoma about the exclusion game, and Muindi about the semiotic circuit game.    It may be helpful to pack each germ with a bit of the earth from which it sprang, i.e. some words about how it was / has been used.

Start Time : Feb 1, 2021 09:57 AM

And for good measure, the previous 
Prototyping Social Forms PSF Germ Bank 210118
Start Time : Jan 18, 2021 09:47 AM

Xin Wei

Fwd: some etudes for process germ bank Alter-Eco Prototyping Social Forms reverb

Dear Everyone,

Looking forward to seeing what seeds people come up with for this process germ bank…

Here are some germs called "etudes” that I’d like to enter into the process germ bank

Improvisational Environments Etudes

Lighting and Rhythm Etudes

The seeds are for sharing.

Apologies in advance — I will start the recording for our work session today but must leave early to take care of family…
Muindi, may I pass the baton to you for hosting this session today and finishing the recording?

Take care,
Xin Wei
_________________________________
On Nov 29, 2020, at 4:00 PM, Muindi F Muindi <muindi@uw.edu> wrote:
Hi all,
Thanks again for joining in the Alter-Eco/PSF reverb discussions that have taken place since November 2nd. Some of us are preparing some "process germs" to share with the group in response to our last discussion, but I don't think that these are ready yet. Thus, this week, I think we could discuss some potential texts to collaborate on and that we would feature on the Alter-Eco/PSF website alongside those "process germs" that can be dispersed digitally (again, as we discussed, some "process germs" that we are imagining can only be dispersed experientially or materially).

Below are links to some of texts written in response to the Alter-Eco/PSF sessions this past summer. Feel free to briefly skim them, but note that we do not need to draw from them.