FUTURE ANTERIOR: A PSYCHOTEMPORAL FUGUE (A XENFLIX ORIGINAL)

Bahar Noorizadeh’s After Scarcity closes on an invitation: “The recent rise of TV culture proves that a planned and cultivated stretch of time can be adequately thrilling to stimulate a Utopian impulse.” Marc Couroux’s Future Anterior is a psychotemporal fugue in 17 episodes tracking the efforts of three temporal prospectors—X, Y & Z—at pinging the present’s occult(ed) orientations by engineering anachronistic phenomena, xeno-events smoking out political distributions, virally spawning cultural repatternings in the manner of a cargo cult scenario. F(r)ictions occasioned by conflicting notions of the future are compounded by the encroachment of machine learning protocols unstably oscillating between seductive inscrutability and dystopian amplifications of present inclinations, increasingly unmaking existing realities, compelling our circuit riders to deepen their game, pitting molecular immersion against dark opacity. The Rubicon, an intelligence agency term for the total simulation of sound and image attained via the intimate collaboration of human and machine, provides the necessary accelerant. Precognitive episodes abound throughout (not to mention a curious case of plagiarism by anticipation) further complexifying operations, as the trio is caught in the grips of becoming unintelligible. (Spoiler alert in effect.)

Marc Couroux is Associate Professor of Visual Art in the School of Arts, Media, Performance & Design at York University. He is a founding member of The Occulture, a Toronto collective investigating the esoteric imbrications of sound, affect and hyperstition. Recent talks have been held at MaerzMusik, Berlin; New York University; Parsons School of Design, New York; Kingston University, London; Goldsmiths, University of London; the Aesthetics After Finitude Conference, Sydney; and London Media Arts Association. His recent publications include Ludic Dreaming: How to Listen Away from Contemporary Technoculture (Bloomsbury), and a Preemptive Glossary for a Techno-Sonic Control Society in the Volumes catalogue (Blackwood Gallery), among others.

fORUM is an ongoing series of talks, lectures, interviews, screenings and performances at Mercer Union. Admission is free and all are welcome.