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Without intending it to be this way, Becoming’s magazine always appears when something big is changing for us. The first came at the very beginning, as a magazine published by our old record label, the second came just before we opened our Publishing House. Now, as we enter a new era, this magazine, the fruit of the Becoming Tree, is ripe enough to fall. This issue is dedicated to the first-born of Becoming, a record label named Eternal/Return. We are using ÊT/RE to return to our centre, Music. Yet, we have a specific take on music that we wish to dedicate ÊT/RE to: we want to view music as a matter of world-building, of utterance, invocation—music is the second fire of Prometheus, we must carry it into the dark as we would a flame. Music is arcane; it is a ritual of summoning, of calling a forth a future—it is with sound that we create new spacetimes, and with music we create new worlds. It is hard to talk about music without talking about everything else. So that's what we did. Join us in this third edition, Issue Two, as we sit down with a group of musicians, writers and artists to talk about music and everything that comes with it: from Bach, to Berghain. From Rebetiko to Underground Pop. From AI to Ocean Currents. From Electromagnetism to the Fall of Man. We have 8 stories to tell, from 8 contributors, all illustrated and illuminated with collage work and photography contributions themed around mythology, tarot, and other forms of world-weaving. Featured: Charles Mudede, Female Wizard, Mystiki Fleva, Rose Laurel, Ibrahim Alfa Jnr, IOLI, Palais Sinclaire & 0nty. CONTENTS: Music is older than the World. Editor's Letter by Palais Sinclaire. The Affinity between Music & Divinity. In conversation with Charles Mudede. A Body complicates. In conversation with Female Wizard. Music, the Ocean & Man: Three modes of Movement. In conversation with Mystiki Fleva. Prelude to our [Eternal/Return]. In conversation with Rose Laurel. The Alfa & Omega of Ibrahim Junior. In conversation with Ibrahim Alfa Jnr. Honestly... In conversation with IOLI. Nostalgia for Non-Places: Some posthumous notes on Vaporwave by 0nty. DETAILS: ISSN: 2672-8818 (print) ISSN: 2672-8826 (online) 80 pages, A4, colour Edited by Claire Elise & Polymnia

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Issue Two: Becoming-ÊT/RE

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OFFER: SPEND €20 and get a 50% discount on this T-shirt. Discount is automatic. We finally got around to making some t-shirts featuring the new emblem, as illustrated by Stelios Ilchuk. The t-shirt is available in two colours, White or Petroleum Blue, and all the shirts are printed in Rose Gold (Pantone 695 C) ink. SIZE GUIDE: Silk screen printed by Print Express, Poland.

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Where do you begin with a book like this; a book containing dialogues on a micro contemporary avant-garde video art movement on social media called “CoreCore”? It is, as “0nty”, the lead editor said, more of a toll booth; this book ensures no possiblity for the artists to be cut out of the loop when the academics arrive en scene. That aside, it is a fascinating collection of texts on cultural theory, psychoanalysis and philosophy, which, as filmmaker and contributor Mischa Dols said: “has no right to be as good a book as it is; it wasn’t supposed to actually be good”.This book follows on from the proceedings of "All Things are Nothing to Us", a symposium on CoreCore and the Contemporary Online Avant-Garde, held on December 2nd. 2023, at the School of Visual Arts, NYC; organized by 0nty and OnMyComputer (Dylan Smith). The book contains a mass of visual art from upward of 140 contributors. Monumental book. CoreCore is the term that is associated with a particular practice of film-making (read arranging moving-images) that has emerged through social media apps like TikTok. Taking its name from the -corification of aesthetics in the Tumblr-era (fairycore, cottagecore), CoreCore usually involves, as Louis Morelle writes in the book, images concatenated against each other. Lucas Ferraço Nassif theorized that, like the Japanese concept of Ma, something jumps out from the gaps in-between images: "CoreCore is two words, but its the same word, and there is a mirror-stage between the two cores: who is going to confirm what the core is?". This book brings together artists and theorists who were either part of the movement, or fans of the movement, close to it, and so on, to create an anthology which explores the movement on its own terms, and ensures that no academic can ever discuss CoreCore without citing this book, and thus ensuring the underground their place in the discussion. Featuring 0nty • Dylan Smith (OnMyComputer) • John-Robin Bold • Bebe_Crotte • Societyiftextwall • Aemmonia • Emonie Fay Chetwin (Xleepyfay) • Alice Aster • Anastasĳa Pavić • Anastasiia Pishchanska (shelestvetrovki) • Ash Ingram • ChaoticRhizomatic • Crisis Acting • Dana Dawud • Daniel Neeman • Edson Javier Rogil • Hunter Thompson • Joe Iovino (Levels of Nuance) • John DeSousa • John Michael • Jomel • Liam Harding (X._.pulp) • Louis Higgins - Louis Morelle • Maria Puglisi • Mason Noel • Mischa Dols • i0 xen0 • Nicholas Sanchez (Wonderful Cringe) • Nick Vyssotsky • Nikolaos Sakkadakis • Orion Arnold • Persis Bekkering • Redacted Cut • Reed McDonaldson • Rokas Vaičiulis • Rozzlyn Agnes K • Soham Adhikari • Uba • Zoey Solomon • Machine Yearning • Jordi Viader Guerrero • Tommaso Campagna • Kali Masoch Dialogues on CoreCore & the Contemporary Online Avant-Garde (2024)Author: Onty, Morelle, L., Dawud, D., et al.Editor(s): Onty (Eds.), OnMyComputerEdition: 1stDate: April 2024CatNO: (becoming)05AISBN: 978-9925-8118-0-9 (Print)Language: EnglishFormat: SoftcoverBinding: Perfect BoundDimensions: 14.8cm x 21cmPages: 230Contains over 140 artistic contributionsDesign by Onty To be cited as:0nty, OnMyComputer (Eds.) (2024) Dialogues on CoreCore & the Contemporary Online Avant-Garde. Berlin/Nicosia: Becoming. 978-9925-8118-0-9.

Dialogues on CoreCore & the Contemporary Online Avant-Garde by 0nty & Smith (Eds.) et al.

15 years after his death, the ghost of Jean Baudrillard lingers. Beyond just a pessimistic media theorist, the hyper-realist metaphysician of media and information may have become more relevant than ever before, and many of the concepts that Baudrillard left behind have become guiding principles in an ever deteriorating situation. Much of these ideas, from the Hyperreal to Cultural Nihilism, were repopularised in the last 15 years through such books as Capitalist Realism, in which the poster child for critical theory, Mark Fisher, appeared to have left the world a message, written in blood on the inside of our shared prison cell: Baudrillard was right! A lot of the most frightening confessions there drew primarily from Baudrillard such as the future collapsing in on itself, and all meaning and symbolism melting down into a delirious nihilism under the ever-rising heat of Capital as it establishes itself as an all-encompassing, totalising, technology-obsessed form of dominion, that thinks and acts of its own will, like an Artificial Intelligence that endlessly feeds itself data until all information has been devoured. To say that we live in a simulation seems more true than ever, as we have less and less ability to affect anything, we reach out to influence what we see, only to realise time and time again that we are somehow cut off from the content, as if everything we know is just a projection on a wall; the horrors are real, and happening somewhere, but exist to us as holograms. We can but run our fingers through the beams of light projected on the wall, so close but so far from anything real. We are psychiatric patients trapped in algorithmic cells, cut-off, stressed, and scared—the prophecies that caused Fisher to panic have, by this point, been completely realised. We have crossed over a threshold into a world that is both more-real than real, and yet entirely unintelligible and unintuitive, shifting wildly around and unfolding like a fever-dream. In the delirium of the simulation, nothing makes sense without knowing the codes that superficially hold everything together, and perhaps only Baudrillard figured out the code. After all, Baudrillard, with his ideas about code, the digital, quantum theory and hyperreality, seems to be one of the few who recognised early enough the true form of Capital as fictitious or speculative Capital. While his books may have once read like speculative, cynical horror-fictions about what could go wrong if Capital became an all-encompassing and nihilistic tyrant, now that this has come true, perhaps it is time to consult his ghost. It is time to admit that the worst case scenario has become real, and that the raving-mad cynic on the side of French Theory may have been talking the most sense, after all.This book is a serious diagnosis of the current form of capital, a profound excavation and presentation of the most important and helpful ideas that Baudrillard published from the unravelling of western philosophy, to a redefining of marxist theories of economics and capital, to a shift in critical theory that complies with quantum theory. ______ “It seems to have been the fatal fate of simulation theory that simulation ended up devouring theory itself: the sublime disappearance of theory and its own referent happened through obscene overexposure, and hastily led to a forced reduction of theory to a mere piece of intellectual currency, that quickly lost its value and power. Baudrillard was well aware that his own discourse was subject to simulation, because all attempts to represent and criticise the simulated system fall victim to the simulation itself. Any opposition to the system can apparently be easily integrated into the system itself. But what happened in the intellectual scene after Baudrillard was all the more spooky: the entire hyper-current of ultra-exposed and ghostly resurrected critical academic discourse continues to prolong its failure in operation to this day, only to fail further. Some headwinds have only come from minoritarian groups such as Tiqqun, who rely on deception and the confusing fog of the black underground against a system that operates by making its own visibility visible. But if the critics, even those who dismiss the notion of simulation in the name of a recoverable political or historical movement, are themselves implicated in the precession of simulacra, then this could still apply even to the darkest discourses of the minorities. But what if, in the wake of quantum theory, not only could the inexorable logic of the excluded third no longer have any effect, nor would a "both and" that comes close to simulation suffice to ride those waves of nothingness with which the worlds we are familiar with disappear? Baudrillard would now be, in a sense, resurrected from nothingness or resurrected from the dead. Who would speak then, if not the dead themselves? Dark, clandestine and deceptive discourse warriors would have come upon us to fight the simulative war of discourse against itself. These were warriors of an intellectual suicide state practicing the politics of their own disappearance. So why should we write about Baudrillard and beyond him again today?” — Achim Szepanski “For Baudrillard, the crux of theory thus consists, on the one hand, in providing an immanent statement or an immanent description/analysis of a system that follows its inner logic, including a constant integration of the Other, to the bitter end, thus adding nothing to the system qua theory and, on the other hand, reversing it and thus showing that the system is not possible without this Other, which the system also attempts to make impossible.” — Achim Szepanski “On the other hand, it would be a perfect crime to invent a flawless world and draw from it without leaving a trace. However, we leave traces everywhere - viruses, gaps, germs and catastrophes - signs of imperfection that are the signature of man in the age of the artificial world.” — Achim Szepanski Authored by Achim SzepanskiPublished as a collaboration between Becoming & NON.First edition, 14 cm x 21 cm, 240 pages

In the Delirium of the Simulation: Baudrillard Revisited by Achim Szepanski (1st edition)

2nd edition coming soon All this talk of Biopolitics and yet rarely is a biologist consulted. This is a limited run printing of a book entitled "Where does a body begin? Biology's Function in Contemporary Capitalism", written anonymously by the infamous "Meltdown Your Books" a.k.a "S.R.", who has written this book as a part of her Ph.D studies in Evolutionary Biology (with a focus on Mathematical modelling). The book's title "Where does a body begin?" asks a question that begins to reveal some of the issues faced in the field of Biology, namely the difficulty with which contemporary Biology has in determining the limits of the body, or rather what constitutes the body and what doesn't: where, precisely, is the body? Where does it begin? The book begins with an anonymous contribution from one of our closest affiliates, i0 xen0, our favourite transsexual post-doc whose dissertation work also considered the philosophy and history of science and the use of computational modeling in scientific practice, has constructed a contents page in prose that aims to help the reader find a comfortable position with which to begin reading the text. This introduction is framed around a question that is equally as interesting as the book title: "When is a body?", and as this title implies, the piece dwells on the idea of the temporality of the body through a look at such ideas as Kairotic time and bodily seasons. We are presenting here a very fun, yet rigorously peer-reviewed and intellectual work from a Ph.D scholar who has a renowned sense of humor and a unique voice, that is supported by another fantastic artist and thinker from another universe. To cap it off, the book is illustrated by Rachel Lillim, whose visual style is so compelling and intense that it helps everyone see the work for what it is: otherworldly, playful and queer, but deadly serious and radical at the same time. It's a biology text about the body put together by a team of those who are, by and large, under-represented in the field. FOREWORD: "The laboratory is the seat of myopia and the starting line of global misanthropy, a factory of meaning which we call upon in times of distress to remind us of our higher callings. In its best moments it contains all the beauty of ecstatic and life-affirming art, and in its lowest it dredges up nothing but the cruelest and basest impulses, cast in dismal artificial light and remorseless bureaucratic pessimism. These are not qualities which arise from ‘lab culture’, the prevailing emotionality which scientists are so fond of, but from the interconnected web of social constraints and flows into which a lab is set adrift. Labs contain direction and agency, surely, but they are also carried by waters and currents which stretch far beyond the local waters of a particular university or department. There are qualities to a laboratory that escape its own grasp, which have no face or center in a local view but necessarily shape and define the inclinations of scientists within them.Some sciences, in their bucolic bays and inlets, can pretend they are not caught in the great maw of the social, but biology cannot erect any such illusions around itself, despite what biologists may tell their critics–and through repetition for themselves as mantra. It is a science of life undertaken by the living. In many ways it is the most profoundly social action possible, to study ourselves, the fundamentals of this property which defines us." DETAILS: €15,00, A6, 116 pagesISBN: 978-9925-7984-6-9Authored by S.R. (MYB) & i0 xen0.Edited by Nicholas E. PowersIllustrated by Rachel LillimTypography and Layout by Polymnia TsintiProduced and Published by Becoming

Where Does a Body Begin? Biology's function in Contemporary Capitalism by S.R. (MYB) & i0 xen0

2nd edition coming soon Authored by Ulysse Carrière (a.k.a. Émilie Carrière) Introduction by Louis Morelle It’s difficult to introduce this book, as it is not only an elaborate response to a burning question of the moment, but it is a vivid introduction into the work of Émilie Carrière, one of the most thought-provoking and impressive young authors of the last century — originally subtitled The Work of Art in the Age of Automated Reproduction, this text hits home as hard as Benjamin’s essay one hundred years ago. It is a a declaration of the conditions of the moment, and an introduction into how they will solve the problem. A deep exploration into the future of art, and what A.I reveals to us about the direction art is going. The book contextualises art and philosophy within an evolutionary timescale, and uses biology as an entry point into tackling difficult questions about art and intelligence. If you ever wondered how someone might handle a combination of Plato and Deleuze without ever losing form, this is really worth your time. This book has an introduction by Louis Morelle, another impressive, bright and young person with a really cutting-edge perspective on the moment. Between Carrière and Morelle, this text makes for a thrilling introduction to what they are calling Differential Henology. Both authors write with a cinematic flow, and perhaps it is there, in the comfort and conviction of their articulation, that we realise how talented these two authors are. TOPICS COVERED: Artificial Intelligence Millennial Subjectivity Anti-Theory Art, Philosophy of Art The Intellect and Dwelling Techne and Externalization Avatar 2, Wednesday Adams Evolutionary Biology EXCERPTS: “It was no slight genius of the Greeks to first think techne through the figure of Prometheus. The name, evidently, means foresight, as is proper of techne; but Prometheus also served to articulate the relation between techne and dwelling. The original techne was fire, as the primary form of dwelling, and as the means of establishing a contact between the human and the divine. If the divine is that gleam, that holiness from which language and techne separate the human by setting it apart from the unitary process of life, it was techne, the Greeks saw, that allowed for a renewed contact, through dwelling (the hearth) and cult (the sacrificial fire). In the hearth, dwelling and techne came together as one. And this intrication of techne and dwelling did not escape Plato’s sight, for the ideal polis was one organized by techne (Tim. 17d). And it is as such, once techne departs from the zoological—once techne becomes productive rather than an extension of biological features through an acquired object—that it becomes impossible to grasp it through externalization. The sharpening of a stone that was picked off the ground does not belong to the field of productive techne; it is only with something such as the Levallois method of handaxe production that techne begins to produce something that did not previously exist. The sharpened stone is as the gutted fish; something has been acquired and modified to fit a future use, but nothing new has been produced. However, the new kind of techne found in the Levallois method is radically different, as this production entails at once the creation of something that did not previously exist, and the creation of a dwelling. To wander, and wandering, to happen upon a suitable stone; the techne this involves is merely acquisitive. But then, has techne been inadvertently separated into two kinds, one acquisitive, the other productive? And if so, shouldn’t it become necessary to further implicate this productive techne in its relation to dwelling? An elucidation of Sophocles is in order...”EVOLUTIONARY TIME SCALES:“It is often said that techne first externalizes the upper limb, as seen in those apes employing rudimentary tools as an extension of the arm — very fine. But this already places one too far ahead. And yet, even about 500 million years ago, with an organism like Pikaia, one will already find a bilateral symmetry, along with a notochord. That is, a body plan based on bilateral symmetry and a spinal structure, which will be the defining feature of more complex animals, already appears early on in the history of metazoans. The body plan of most animals consists in bilateral symmetry, a body plan composed of one axis running from head to tail (antero-posterior axis), the other from back to belly (dorso-ventral axis). The antero-posterior axis runs along the alimentary system, an axis along which a notochord and later a spine will develop. In a human, bilateral symmetry forms an antero-posterior axis along which one gets two symmetrical eyes, two arms, two legs, two kidneys, lungs, ears, etc. This provides the organism with an axis of segmentation where different organs can be disposed at different coordinates.What Leroi-Gourhan discovers as crucial here is — the recession of the body plan. Bilateral symmetry, he explains, separates the body plan from the alimentary tract, thus creating an anterior field. With the segmentation of the antero-posterior axis, this anterior field can freely develop limbs. This segmentation of the antero-posterior axis, which is controlled by Hox gene clusters, must be older than vertebrae, as it is found in chordates, arthropods and nematodes alike, while limbs themselves are not controlled by the antero-posterior pattern of Hox gene expression. The anterior field of relation, then, is independent from the segmentation of the antero-posterior axis — and this is the most dramatic consequence of bilateral symmetry. Leroi-Gourhan had it right: the anterior field as separate from the antero-posterior axis, something confirmed by evolutionary developmental studies, is what allows for the independence between vertebral segmentation and the development of limbs. That is, bilateral symmetry makes the limb independent from the axis of segmentation running along the alimentary tract. A differential process distinguishes movement from feeding; for the worm, the same overall structure governs both. And so, that power of motility is gradually differentiated into its unity, away from the multiplicity of functions which, in the worm, are served by the same, identical structure.”EXTERNALIZATION & TECHNE:“Externalization forms the common understanding of techne: a hammer externalizes the striking gesture of the forearm, a saw externalizes the slicing gesture of teeth, fire externalizes the body’s temperature, cooking over a fire externalizes digestive processes, writing externalizes linguistic memory, artificial intelligence externalizes computational intelligence. But if I approach Artificial Intelligence as a form of externalization, I think within the technical dispositive of externalization — or rather, the dispositive thinks for me. The thinking has already been done. Thought must first annihilate the dispositive if it is to think beyond the positive. But there can be no critique involved; thought cannot be allowed to founder into negativity. The positivity that would condition thought—what just is—is precisely nothing, and so it is not overcome by negation, but only by that annihilation through which thought strives back towards its own, the unconditioned.If thought is not in its own, τὸ ἐπ’ αὐτῷ εἶναι, it is conditioned, and belonging to the series of conditions, it merely follows necessity and compulsion, it is fallen — and the positive becomes the limit of the span of thought, and thought cannot extend beyond the positive.But if I say that thought must first think techne as externalization if it is to think techne as such, isn’t this a graver danger still? By grasping thought as a biological function proper to hominids, I set a biological limit to thought. But then it is precisely this very limit that comes to confront me in the unthinkable of a non-biological thought — Artificial Intelligence. So as I start off saying that thought is an evolutionary development, Artificial General Intelligence faces me as a non-biological form of thought, a contradiction. That life has evolved thought and that a machine may acquire it, this must tell me that thought is not essentially biological. Or is it really so? Because I can also assume externalization here, and suppose that a biological feature, thought, has been externalized from the human body. This is my problem. Did an organism evolve thought before externalizing it into a machine, or did an organism evolve up to thought, just like a machine might? If I assume that thought is merely biological, techne then, confronts me as the biological limit of thought.” DETAILS: 18x11cm, 88 pages ISBN13: 978-9925-7984-0-7 Released: April 21st 2023

Technically Man Dwells upon this Earth by Ulysse Carrière (a.k.a. Émilie Carrière)

Publications & Merch

Ushering in a Third Age of Becoming (Editor's letter July 2024)

Trace 89. Seducing Baudrillard: Ultrablack Aphrodite, and the Appearance of She-Herself in the Universe

Trace 88b. Reflections on 'PalCoreCore' by Dana Dawud

Trace 88a. PalCoreCore (2023) by Dana Dawud

Trace 87. Opening Remarks to 'Dialogues on CoreCore' by 0nty

Trace 86. Nothingness, Emptiness and Nihilism by Achim Szepanski (Publication Excerpt)

Trace 85. Simulation One: What exactly is a simulation? by Achim Szepanski (Publication Excerpt)

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