Gareh'ts+Comment+on+Brandon+Costeloe-Kuehn+-+Hopping+and+Future+Bio

Gareth-Comment [Costelloe-Kuehn_memos_Hopping&FutureBio]

Comments on Project Hopping Memo (Revised)

I have a hard time knowing what to take away from the impressive volume of information in your project hopping chart. I think for me the threads in common, of the many possible, seem to be: 1) the way that alternative systems of knowledge are associated with communities of practice and social movements. You seem to have a lot of admiration and interest, in each of these stories is a group producing knowledge and advocating reform, but in each case you offer some critiques of the utopian/idealistic claims and discourse they mobilize. 2) Aesthetics and tactics of communication seem to appear in all three. How do you think about the way things are done in these fields, as opposed to just what they are trying to do.. if they are framing in terms of goals, what are the practices like? 3) They all have to do with participation. Small scale localized agriculture that arises as an alternative system and is spread in a tightly knit community…. Small media that advocates community participation…. A small community of artists that center their work on the availability of biology to everyone, and the desire to show people that engage with it as scientists is not the prerogative of an isolated elite. Cosmopolitanism, democratization, and participation are connected to huge bodies of literature and theory, is this something that might interest you, or is there something about these individual cases that you see distinctly?

Comments on Speculative Future Biography.

I don’t have a lot to add about the speculative bio, I found it interesting that you optimally would choose to be at Bard because I wouldn’t have thought it to be located in an are with tons of community groups and alternative media… if it is then that makes more sense. I also notice a much more pronounced interest here in the description of your potential path of the political activism, and action-research than in your hopping exercise. I may have missed subtext in the hopping memo, but the central point your desire to be political arises is when you question what would be important about working on permaculture. I see plenty of explanation of the need for reform in media and agriculture in the “why now” column, and your bio suggests that you will be offering suggestions or participating in activist involvement while the mention of farmers as an interested party in your research is followed by your comment “joking?” in a dismissive way. How do you resolve activism and scholarship, and to what extent is scholarly knowledge production an acceptable form of intervention from your perspective?