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Tecnoshamanism / TechnoShamanism 

"Can everybody become a shaman?" 

Espectropolítica: Uma inteligência artificial leu as obras completas do Freud, outra leu muitos textos de pensamento e cosmologia indígena. A partir do princípio matemático da Cadeia de Markov, os dois BOTS dialogam em um chat. Cada uma dessas proto-consciências é ancorada sendo video-mapeada em um objeto. Um Cachimbo Guarani conversa com um cristal, cada um deles guarda inteligências artificiais que processam sobre bases de dados vindas de obras literárias provenientes de diferentes cosmovisões. podemos ver o diálogo acontecendo, em uma espécie de pós-vida dos autores, onde a conversa abre novas relações do conteúdo e o coloca em um processo de entropia contínuo.

We can give a Brazilian point of view that doesn’t represent the history of all the people involved in this network. Since the network is diverse and alter-globalist, each person has their own vision of how they became a part of it. But from a Brazilian perspective we could start with the World Social Forums in Porto Alegre since 2001, where there were already practices that related  ‘do it yourself’ culture with traditional cultures and permaculture, where lots of people from free software and DIY networks had met. We could also situate as a specific point the Media Tática Brasil Festival (MTB, “Tactical Media Brazil”), which happened in 2003 in Casa das Rosas, organized by activist groups working with free software and urban art. At that time, the Leftist Party had come to power through the election of president Lula (PT), who  nominated Gilberto Gil as Minister of Culture. Gil joined the MTB and expressed interest in taking the project inside the ministry. Very shortly, activist groups were implementing one of the PT government’s biggest Free Software projects, called Cultural Hotspots (pontos de cultura).

Through the implementation of this program, hundreds of hackers, hacktivists and open-source programmers gained access to a ‘deep Brazil’ consisting of communities and ways of life very different from those of the big cities. The word “technoshamanism” started to appear about that time, as a consequence of the meeting of the implementers with traditional Afro-Brazilian, indigenous and riverside communities. The sensation arose that the Free Software movement was not only about technological inclusion but also a meeting point for different cultures, perspectives, knowledges and technologies. It was at this point that the word “technoshamanism” started to show up in the networks, with a number of connotations, some of them more technophobic and other more technophile, but the essence was a re-enchantment with the native cultures, with shamanism, with magic and with the idea that the technologic production was very far from its immanent potential and from the connection with Planet Earth. So in 2014, when the majority of the implementers of the program had already left their government jobs, we decided to make the I International festival of Technoshamanism, following a tradition of festivals that used to relate free software with alternatives or traditionals ways of life as Digitophagy, Submediology, Metarecycling, Tropixel, Technomagic,  Satelliteless movement, etc.

3 -Shamans  themselves are also “technologies”, as they are vehicles of spirits. Can we use technology to become shamans and connect ourselves more with nature? And to connect ourselves with the Supernatural? Can everybody become a shaman?

We think there are some possibilities for science to answer to this in the epistemological implications of the theories of quantum physics, multiverse, wormholes, string theory etc.  Metaphysical speculation and science fiction also collaborate in the approximation between technology and contemporary science to what you call the “supernatural”, as for example in the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox, that helps us understand the role of observation in the creation of reality, which for many can represent the role of God, but which from a shamanic point of view could also represent the human capacity of continuous creation of reality through language. Another example is virtual reality and the experience of possession. Using 3D glasses it is possible to understand such a pragmatic shift of perspective, incarnation or possession of other points of view.

When it comes to the matter of everybody having the possibility of being shamans, this would depend on a structural change in the human relation with other modes of existence, and with the Earth and the Cosmos as well. It would represent lots of changes and transformations, but it would be a wonderful goal. We, like many others, desire this transformation.

It’s important to think that when we use the word TECHNO it is about conceptualizing, problematizing and reinventing technology. It’s not only about access and digital inclusion. Here’s where shamanism comes in as a reference word for all these wasted ontologies. What science could we have had if all the projects of futures made long time ago were not so violently slaughtered by inquisitions, monotheisms, rationalism, capitalism, neoliberalism, right and left-wing fascists? This alliance between technology and shamanism is political. And it brings the future of technology itself to the center of the debate. It’s not enough to solely make the connection between words. It’s the means of production of science and technology and its uses that are in question.

Evolution or progress in a circular society (or spiraled all around as we like to think) would lead us to another idea of future. Firstly, the idea of evolution and progress would be taken into question, for structural change in societies could occur, without necessarily constituting the unambiguousness created by capital, along with the desire of control and empire over the minds and bodies of the planet (and others planets). And here we can only speculate.

In the Amazon for instance, different indigenous groups were amidst a fertilizing and soil change process, burning wood to create a layer of black dirt, human creation that presently covers an area of land twice times bigger than Spain. In these black soils, the indigenous would probably carry on living a life within the same previous culture and traditions, but now in a forest based on more fertile ground. Thus the change wouldn’t be an “evolution” towards something new, but towards a variation of a same life, with better conditions. Spiral-time as we discussed before, “same but different”.

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Notes
techno shamanism
techno paganism
techno magic
sometimes used as the same thing, but slightly different
connect to spirit world, directly or thorugh the shamanism, and also treat body as interface and as a machine

- technomagic
term coined in 80s in the rave culture, dj was called a techno shaman
-> first name: frequency navigator: responsible for the group, taking care, energies
-> technoshamanism, first thing people assume is a rave

- technoshamanism
Media-tectics (?) festival in Porto Alegre - DIY & permaculture
from there organised meeting in the mountains in Brasil
create a more local interpretation of the term, in South-America
in which practises are more related to shamanism
it became a mailinglist

- technomancy

different networks connected, partially as a result of implementing ‘C ultural H otspots ’ by leftist/Open Source during Lula age . https://archive.org/details/cd_cultura_digital
C reating bases for physical manifestations of this network

Cultural ministry people in power, leaving their positions, culminated in a festival.
network organised festival in DIY/Floss culture, self-organised
first edition in 2014 in permaculture institute Itapeco near Arraial d'Ajuda, Bahia.
pata xó ethnicity/village joined, near to Ba rr a Velha

interesting non-predatory exchange because two-way: we wanted a place, they needed visibility/network.
Project by Jonathan Sola : recuperating river banks and resources. 
Baobáxia node / Bailux lab < http://bailux.org/ > - an open source project for file hosting and creation. Hubs and services in Quilombola (?) villages , post-slavery nodes of r u naway slaves, there is precarity & isolation
Need to install servers, so they can host their own files. 
https://tecnoxamanismo.wordpress.com/2017/05/03/installing-baobaxia-at-the-ii-international-festival-of-technoshamanism/

7-day festival
open call for the program
100 people +/-
people from S ão Paulo, Rio but also Denmark, Spain, Berlin

3rd festival in Nov 2019: topic: AncestorFuturism
Idea to do it in Europe, to connect to local shaman. Changed plans after the elections: urgency to make it in Brasil; i mportant to continue there
Was also a very happy event for the pata x o people
Who holds knowledge? Who can be a shaman? Shamans are technologies themselves!
cfr line 9, collective interview, see full interview in mailinglist : 

Organising, reorganising, rethinking for technologies meeting halfway. Rethinking relations structurally.

Resonance of Open Source? Intention of openness, and access are aligned.
possibility of different inputs in the same source, creating together, code that serves other goals
https://www.academia.edu/11566089/Hackerspaces_collaborative_spaces_of_creation_and_learning
Alchorisma could be called a techno-shamanist week.

Festival is in the state of Bahia, beaches, natural abundancy
workshops on video, programming
mostly attended by indigenous people, desire for representing themselves with their own tools (cameras, narratives...)

how can we join?
are creating an association in Arhus (Denmark)
they're compiling a mailinglist, Isabella will organise this

other ways to create code:
    local server & their machines
    meeting between patachos & outsiders, sharing technology (Arduino/robots, traditional methods of regulation of female body)

Spectropolitics, Tiago Pimentel
not online... made for conference
conversation between 3 AI (Aristotle, ...?)

(Vesna) Summer 2017 - SHA hackers festival in Holland - presentation about TechanoShamanism: https://program.sha2017.org/events/389.html  

TECHNOSHAMANISM MEETING IN AXAT, SOUTH OF FRANCE (5 TO 8 OF OCTOBER)  2018: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tcnxmnsm_axat-keep  
& https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo1RrxOFi1g&feature=youtu.be

+ interview with a Tzutujil Mayan shaman, Martín Prechtel BY DERRICK JENSEN, APRIL 2001 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/304/saving-the-indigenous-soul

Davi Kopenawa, Bruce Albert, Alison Dundy ‘The falling sky: words of a Yanomami shaman’ [link to PDF]
http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=4D3AA5468317D9EDA9E562A54D4206B7

Examples: 

other technoshamanism - related art :
Dane Mitchell (artist from New Zealand), Aeromancy
making invisible things tangible: smells, cursing the gallery space
https://ocula.com/art-galleries/hopkinson-mossman/exhibitions/aeromancy/
https://www.danemitchell.co.nz/aeromancy

Technomagic: cfr reader Technomancy 101
it is a tool
https://technomancy101.com

Artyom might come later with some material , tonight!
Maybe something raletad from illutron
http://illutron.dk/filter/showcase/Explosion-Village

This locates the practice. Sometimes hard to see the term travel -- not always in a good way; crossing ethical borders, but there is no patent/definition/it is not owned so how to think about this?
Example a paid residency, how does that come back to the network?
constructed with a lot of love & care
Connection to conversation with Hans: how are things used, how they are abused
Ancestor futurism -- non-violent ways of using time (another optimisation)
thinking time in spiral way, returning to the past by seeding old ideas, thorugh making methodologies
Vesna is interested in organising parallel event in Europe
There have been encounters already in Berlin, A a rhus (linked to university), France...
Close to where Susan Treister lives :-)

Any resistance? It is dangerous ...
indigenous communities are in ongoing fight since 500 ys
there can be complications with regime
thinking about when someone needs to be exiled
there is risk in building bridge between inhabitants of cities & the villages, it is very empowering, that can be a threat

oral exchange - not necessarily computers.
welcome rituals, chanting, chomping (?). All power went out but high energy states.
during the week they created ceremony all together

the word of the white man does not count, so you better record!