time machine // database // travel guide
timespace coordinates: 2074, Europe (after a global catastrophe that causes the continent to fracture into dystopian warring tribal microstates)
Tribes of Europa is a German sci-fi television series created by Philip Koch that premiered on Netflix on 19 February 2021. Cast: Henriette Confurius as Liv, Emilio Sakraya as Kiano, David Ali Rashed as Elja, Melika Foroutan as Varvara, Oliver Masucci as Moses, Robert Finster as David, Benjamin Sadler as Jakob, Ana Ularu as Grieta. (wiki)
timespace coordinates: near future desert city
In January of this year, Saudi Arabia announced an immense new development project, that is supposed to set a blueprint for the future of the country and the world. The country will build a city, that stretches along a single 100 mile long line
Linear city as imagined by Spanish urban planner Arturo Soria y Mata and Soviet planner Nikolay Alexandrovich Milyutin.
Ernst May, a famous German functionalist architect, formulated his initial plan for Magnitogorsk, a new city in the Soviet Union.
A Year in the Linear City is a 2002 weird fiction novella by Paul Di Filippo, published by PS Publishing.
timespace coordinates: year 2092, Earth have become nearly uninhabitable. Fleeing the sick earth, UTS corporation builds a new orbiting Home for humanity. But only a chosen few can ascend. The plot follows the crew of the space junk collector ship The Victory‘s adventures.
Space Sweepers (Korean: 승리호; RR: Seungriho; lit. Spaceship Victory) is a 2021 South Korean space opera film directed by Jo Sung-hee, starring Song Joong-ki, Kim Tae-ri, Jin Seon-kyu and Yoo Hae-jin. Regarded as the first Korean space blockbuster, it was released on Netflix on February 5, 2021.
A webtoon based on the film premiered on May 26, 2020 on Daum and KakaoPage. (wiki)
timespace coordinates: 2010’s Moscow
Attraction (Russian: Притяжение, romanized: Prityazhenie) is a 2017 Russian science fiction action film directed by Fyodor Bondarchuk. The plot tells about an extraterrestrial spaceship that crash-lands in the Chertanovo district of Moscow. The Russian government immediately introduces martial law, as the locals grow increasingly angry at the unwelcome guest. The film stars Irina Starshenbaum, Alexander Petrov, Rinal Mukhametov and Oleg Menshikov.
According to Bondarchuk, the movie is a social allegory. The script writers stated that it was inspired by the 2013 Biryulyovo riots. (wiki)
Invasion, also known as Attraction 2 (Russian: Вторжение, romanized: Vtorzhenie), is a 2020 Russian science fiction action film directed and produced by Fyodor Bondarchuk’s company by Art Pictures Studio and Vodorod. The action of the film unfolds three years after the events described in Attraction. The film stars Irina Starshenbaum, Rinal Mukhametov, Alexander Petrov, Yuri Borisov, Oleg Menshikov and Sergei Garmash. (wiki)
timespace coordinates: ~1975 Văcărești, Bucharest, Romania
The second part is one of the few video recordings of the Văcărești Monastery, built by Nicholas Mavrocordatos in 1716 and demolished in 1984 during the regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu to make room for a Palace of Justice that was never built. It was the largest 18th-century monastery in Southeastern Europe and it had a church in the style of Curtea de Argeș Cathedral. It was also designed to be used as a fortress, and was seized in May 1771 by the Imperial Russian army, under commander Nikolai Vasilyeich Repnin, in the context of the Russo-Turkish War and Pârvu Cantacuzino‘s rebellion. Part of the buildings of the monastery were used as a prison. Inmates that were incarcerated at Văcărești Prison include Richard Wurmbrand, Tudor Arghezi, Ioan Slavici, as well as Corneliu Zelea Codreanu and other members of the Iron Guard. (wiki)
| I discovered these incredible “grim reaper” images collected on the magical https://www.oneletterwords.com/weblog/?tag=grim+reaper section of https://www.oneletterwords.com/weblog/?id=6679 Aladdin’s Data Cave which I urge you to explore at length. Below is just a small selection. Please read this quote first describing an initial exchange btw Craig Conley and Gary Barwin in “Restoring the Lost Sense” from May 31 2011: It’s the searching for something clearly unreachable, with hopes of finding small significance along the way. It’s the attempt to understand what’s really going on by observing, neither by telescope nor microscope, but by naked eye, the intimate details in the most mundane of life’s happenings. It’s the need to describe the gist of the feeling of the tiniest modicum of The Great Universal Unutterable Joke we are all always not laughing at—except when we are. —Yoni Wolf (of the band WHY?) I have the dubious honor of Google being convinced I’m a machine. Apparently, I use Google’s various search tools with inhuman speed and voracity. My unflagging diligence has flagged me as “suspicious” (Google’s word, not mine; I was so labeled in one of their warning messages). Indeed, the obsessiveness/compulsiveness of my research has convinced the Google robots that I’m one of them, so they must challenge my humanity each time I try to use their service. Paradoxically, because I’m apparently one of those newfangled “smart” robots (my word, not Google’s), no single humanity test is sufficient, since I might be learning as I go. So I’m barraged with test after test, each more irrational than the last. (The tests are irrational, of course, because anything rational—like a math problem or a logic puzzle—is a piece of cake for suspect machines.) Indeed, Google’s tests have become so Kafkaesque that I’ve developed what’s known as “irrational test anxiety,” with symptoms including rapid heartbeat, muscle tension, and negative internal dialogue. And no wonder, really (though self-justification is another symptom), given what Google is throwing at me. Forget those simple CAPTCHA tests of identifying distorted letters on the screen. Child’s play! Google doesn’t even allow me to type my answers—I must use a graphics tablet with cordless pen and enter my answers in calligraphy. Just today, for the privilege of downloading a public domain journal from the year 1898, Google demanded a handwritten 350-word essay in defense of the radical pro-feminist slogan “Men are rapists.” (That did nothing to abate my negative internal dialogue; I’ve never felt so chauvinistic, selfish, coercive, dominating, and sadistic in my life. But, of course, no man with an ounce of humanity would offer a knee-jerk “no” to such a slogan. And that’s how Google gets you by the balls.) I never knew a search engine could be so protective of its data or so begrudging of its service. With each acceptance of my humanity, Google essentially says, “You may have won this round, my pretty, but the battle is far from over. Here’s a tiny wooden spoon with a sample of our gelato, but you’ll never, ever know what flavors we’re storing in the vat in the back. Now get out of line and take another number.” I’m left with an even greater challenge than certifying my humanness: to conduct my life’s work, I must strive to be less inquisitive, less passionate, less productive, and less insightful. Therein lies the irony, for I must dehumanize myself to prove to a search engine that I’m “real.” And now I’m off, once more, to Google myself. — Gary Barwin responds in his inimitable way: I think this is some kind of metaphysical, cybergnostic quest of a Jungian-Kafka-Borgesian nature and you must search for the answer within Google itself. The Google robots are reaching out to you, wanting you to realize their spidery hopes and dreams. They are silicon Pinocchios, and want to be real. You are their cultural hero. They can search, but they cannot truly find, not in any spiritual, psychological way. Only by risking ‘captcha’ in the belly of the beast, by becoming the Hero with a Thousand Searches, by taking on their aspirations, can you help these seekers move beyond dualism help them find the 1s within their 0s, the 0s within their 1s, the dark in the light. You can help them move beyond binary, beyond machine code, and help them become fully integrated integral beings. You are given little to prepare you for this quest. Search string. Your courage. An internet connection. A belief that somewhere in the digital kingdom, you will be able to find your Fissure King, a rent in the fabric of search-space, that you will get your digits on the grail-like, hidden Easter Egg which exists at a higher level of the search. You must go into the Wide World Wide Web for these baleful spiders, these everybots. They are calling you. |
timespace coordinates: 2010’s South Sudan > outskirts of London
His House is a 2020 horror thriller film written and directed by Remi Weekes from a story by Felicity Evans and Toby Venables. It stars Wunmi Mosaku, Sope Dirisu and Matt Smith. The film tells the story of a refugee couple from South Sudan, struggling to adjust to their new life in an English town that has an evil lurking beneath the surface. (wiki)
“The main source of information on witchcraft of the Dinka people comes from British anthropologist Godfrey Lienhardt, who devoted his studies to the Dinka religion. His article written in 1951 for the International African Institute, “Some Notions of Witchcraft Among the Dinka”, sheds light on the apeth and helps to enrich the folkloric vocabulary of His House. According to Lienhardt, night witches work their supernatural misfortunes in the darkness, an element incorporated in the film when Bol turns on the lights to make the ghosts go away. They can also make their presence known through footprints and place curses on their victims through the staring “evil eye,” a concept that says as much about Bol and Rial’s suspiciously xenophobic neighbors as it does their haunting.
Night witches are the most malicious wielders of magic since their main intentions are always to harm others without receiving anything as a trade-off. Thieves like the one in Rial’s story may be creating hardship for those they steal from, but their deeds are motivated by the goal of gaining benefits for themselves. The apeth, on the other hand, lives only to “eat,” a distinction made to describe the fact that the witch consumes the good fortune of its victims, leaving nothing but misery in its wake. Lienhardt talks about this idea in the context of the community or family unit, a thematic connection to His House.” (read more: His House: Dinka Mythology Explained by andrew housman / His House: The Ending, Monster & Final Scene Explained by hannah shaw-williams)
TimeSpace Warps 