ETERNAL SEPTEMBER is an alternate reality consisting of an ever-expanding network of audio, video, and hypertext. The project is brought to life through artistic residencies, recorded music, ritual capture events, and site-specific installations. Upon completion, all ETERNAL SEPTEMBER content is extensively documented via its own wiki, a system discrete entirely from the IRL internet, and made available to the general public. The world of ETERNAL SEPTEMBER is developed collectively by a group of uniquely talented musicians, multimedia artists, and creative technologists from a diverse array of stylistic backgrounds. ETERNAL SEPTEMBER collaborators, either as individuals or in groups, create content as alternate reality versions of themselves, or "morphs" - a process reflective both of the early utopian days of the internet and the process of tulpamancy described in Buddhist mysticism. Morphing allows ETERNAL SEPTEMBER collaborators to freely explore repressed artistic impulses without IRL implications. New artists are brought into the creative process organically via existing relationships with the ETERNAL SEPTEMBER team as new content is developed. The project was created by William Brittelle and is incubated at Brown University in collaboration with the Brown Arts Institute, a process that involes the fluid integration of independent artists, students, faculty, technologists, and scholars. Additional core partners include the ensembles of Metropolis and Roomful of Teeth, and an array of presenters (Cincinnati Symphony, Walker Art Center, Great Northern Festival), venues, music studios (Figureight, Machines With Magnets), and record labels (New Amsterdam).
Written by Jose Esteban Munoz in 2003. Presents the term disidentification to refer to the set of techniques employed by queer performers of color, as a survival mechanism necessary to navigate historically racist and homophobic institutions and audiences. Disidentifications allows for forms of communication among queer populations that would otherwise be impossible, while also disrupting conventional habits of the consumption of art and performance.
Written by Frederic Jameson in 1989, investigates and responds to the cultural shifts brought by the proliferation of digital technologies and the reorganization of global capital. Essentially, the book is an attempt to explain why the 70s and 80s were/are so confusing. One notable chapter presents the idea that multimedia art involves a "surrealism without the unconscience"
One important effect of postmodernism is its tendency to treat artists more and more like factory workers.
Written by Kevin Quashie in 2016, proposes an alternative to conventionally "loud" and public forms of resistance to white supremacy. An underappreciated aspect of the text is its emphasis on practices of attunement through the production and consumption of creative labor, which lends itself to a framing of art and media through terms of ritual.