Joel Mason (PhD) is an interdisciplinary theorist and performer working in the mediums of organization & economy as mediums of art. He has presented his work as happenings at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Casa do Povo in Sao Paulo, the 100x centennial celebration of the BauHaus movement in Montreal, and at Haus der Statistik as part of the 2018 Berlin Biennale. He is also the principal author of The Great Dividuation, a piece of speculative fiction, with anique vered and Michael Hornblow (The New Centennial Review, 2019), and the forthcoming work, Plenum Life: Formality in the Movement of Free Ecology (2023). He is the founder of the Maritime Social Innovation Lab in rural eastern Canada, and the founder of Dear Dear Culture Studio, a radical PR firm, in the north woods of Maine.
Comment destituer les formes économiques qui nous régissent et nous tiennent captifs? Et comment,... more Comment destituer les formes économiques qui nous régissent et nous tiennent captifs? Et comment, de proche en proche, favoriser l’instauration de celles, spéculatives et fabulatoires, métastables et localisées, qui sachent résister à la morosité institutionnelle ambiante et permettent d’envisager de nouvelles formes d’incorporations collectives en prise avec les défis de notre temps?
Ce dossier a été réalisé en partenariat avec VOX, centre de l'image contemporaine dans le cadre de l'exposition "L’imaginaire radical II : désœuvrer la valeur/Reclaiming Value." Il inclut: une analyse par Anna Longo de l'installation cinématographique "The Everted Capital" de Fabien Giraud & Raphaël Siboni; un essai sur les DAOs et le monde de l'art signée Calum Bowden et Laura Lotti; une recension de David Thomas du dernier roman de Kim Stanley Robinson, "The Ministry for the Future"; Joel Mason qui jamme dans les pourtours du dernier opus de @Fred Moten et Stefano Harney, All Incomplete; un essai sur la troublante trilogie cinématographique “Fukushima Camera" par Suzanne Beth; une discussion à quatre voix entre les commissaires de l'expo "Désoeuvrer la valeur", François Lemieux, Marilou Lemmens, Bern Tze et moi-même; et finalement une recension de "The Great Offshore", un ouvrage collectif portant sur les rapports entre art et finance dirigé par le collectif RYBN.
In an age of collapse, and in the temporality of many potential 2008’s, monstrous conceptual figu... more In an age of collapse, and in the temporality of many potential 2008’s, monstrous conceptual figures appear on a mythic and symbolic landscape: fiat money, ecological anti-coins, machines of abstraction, factions and fractions of value operating at the borders of the recognized.
The introduction of the ninth issue of Inflexions, the online journal of the SenseLab, intitled "... more The introduction of the ninth issue of Inflexions, the online journal of the SenseLab, intitled "F(r)ictions". The issue gathers experimental research-creation propositions adressing actual social struggles.
An experimental social poesis.
This is a fable, an untrue balance. Start again. This is an ex... more An experimental social poesis.
This is a fable, an untrue balance. Start again. This is an explicitly abstract account of an event that couldn’t count because people weren’t speaking the same language.
This work centres on a specific functional moment in the creation of collective self-defense: a n... more This work centres on a specific functional moment in the creation of collective self-defense: a novel reconceptualization of the endurance (and the negotiations around endurance) of forms that protect the conditions for emergence. Thus this thesis seeks to forward and invent theories and techniques of technological-financial-governmental activation that self-dispossess the ‘source code’ in these fields so activated, informed by the black radical tradition, process philosophy, and interaction-as-computation category theory.
It seeks this forwarding by articulating a new role for formality in the world through the perversion of the discourse of the philosophy of engineering (one already happening, partially, within itself). This thesis is interested in the hypothesis that (1) there is nothing proprietary in informality’s production of the social economic conditions associated with it, (2) formality may then play a role in such productions, augmenting key functional aspects, such as the option for endurance, and adding to the field its own expressive inventions, not only without hampering or dislodging what Denise Ferreira da Silva calls the poethical, but perhaps revealing how it participates in the poethical, and (3) that an articulation of such a role will reveal new frameworks for organizational design tout court, frames able to ripple through practices and disciplines previously thought to be discrete and siloed.
“The total configuration of human experience requires other forms”
An introduction to context and desire: we live in a fascinating time where our need for reflexive... more An introduction to context and desire: we live in a fascinating time where our need for reflexive and collaborative systems of governance meets our inability to create them at large enough scale and at consistent enough levels to make the impact needed to justify the change from old to new.
Comment destituer les formes économiques qui nous régissent et nous tiennent captifs? Et comment,... more Comment destituer les formes économiques qui nous régissent et nous tiennent captifs? Et comment, de proche en proche, favoriser l’instauration de celles, spéculatives et fabulatoires, métastables et localisées, qui sachent résister à la morosité institutionnelle ambiante et permettent d’envisager de nouvelles formes d’incorporations collectives en prise avec les défis de notre temps?
Ce dossier a été réalisé en partenariat avec VOX, centre de l'image contemporaine dans le cadre de l'exposition "L’imaginaire radical II : désœuvrer la valeur/Reclaiming Value." Il inclut: une analyse par Anna Longo de l'installation cinématographique "The Everted Capital" de Fabien Giraud & Raphaël Siboni; un essai sur les DAOs et le monde de l'art signée Calum Bowden et Laura Lotti; une recension de David Thomas du dernier roman de Kim Stanley Robinson, "The Ministry for the Future"; Joel Mason qui jamme dans les pourtours du dernier opus de @Fred Moten et Stefano Harney, All Incomplete; un essai sur la troublante trilogie cinématographique “Fukushima Camera" par Suzanne Beth; une discussion à quatre voix entre les commissaires de l'expo "Désoeuvrer la valeur", François Lemieux, Marilou Lemmens, Bern Tze et moi-même; et finalement une recension de "The Great Offshore", un ouvrage collectif portant sur les rapports entre art et finance dirigé par le collectif RYBN.
In an age of collapse, and in the temporality of many potential 2008’s, monstrous conceptual figu... more In an age of collapse, and in the temporality of many potential 2008’s, monstrous conceptual figures appear on a mythic and symbolic landscape: fiat money, ecological anti-coins, machines of abstraction, factions and fractions of value operating at the borders of the recognized.
The introduction of the ninth issue of Inflexions, the online journal of the SenseLab, intitled "... more The introduction of the ninth issue of Inflexions, the online journal of the SenseLab, intitled "F(r)ictions". The issue gathers experimental research-creation propositions adressing actual social struggles.
An experimental social poesis.
This is a fable, an untrue balance. Start again. This is an ex... more An experimental social poesis.
This is a fable, an untrue balance. Start again. This is an explicitly abstract account of an event that couldn’t count because people weren’t speaking the same language.
This work centres on a specific functional moment in the creation of collective self-defense: a n... more This work centres on a specific functional moment in the creation of collective self-defense: a novel reconceptualization of the endurance (and the negotiations around endurance) of forms that protect the conditions for emergence. Thus this thesis seeks to forward and invent theories and techniques of technological-financial-governmental activation that self-dispossess the ‘source code’ in these fields so activated, informed by the black radical tradition, process philosophy, and interaction-as-computation category theory.
It seeks this forwarding by articulating a new role for formality in the world through the perversion of the discourse of the philosophy of engineering (one already happening, partially, within itself). This thesis is interested in the hypothesis that (1) there is nothing proprietary in informality’s production of the social economic conditions associated with it, (2) formality may then play a role in such productions, augmenting key functional aspects, such as the option for endurance, and adding to the field its own expressive inventions, not only without hampering or dislodging what Denise Ferreira da Silva calls the poethical, but perhaps revealing how it participates in the poethical, and (3) that an articulation of such a role will reveal new frameworks for organizational design tout court, frames able to ripple through practices and disciplines previously thought to be discrete and siloed.
“The total configuration of human experience requires other forms”
An introduction to context and desire: we live in a fascinating time where our need for reflexive... more An introduction to context and desire: we live in a fascinating time where our need for reflexive and collaborative systems of governance meets our inability to create them at large enough scale and at consistent enough levels to make the impact needed to justify the change from old to new.
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Papers by Joel E Mason
Ce dossier a été réalisé en partenariat avec VOX, centre de l'image contemporaine dans le cadre de l'exposition "L’imaginaire radical II : désœuvrer la valeur/Reclaiming Value." Il inclut: une analyse par Anna Longo de l'installation cinématographique "The Everted Capital" de Fabien Giraud & Raphaël Siboni; un essai sur les DAOs et le monde de l'art signée Calum Bowden et Laura Lotti; une recension de David Thomas du dernier roman de Kim Stanley Robinson, "The Ministry for the Future"; Joel Mason qui jamme dans les pourtours du dernier opus de @Fred Moten et Stefano Harney, All Incomplete; un essai sur la troublante trilogie cinématographique “Fukushima Camera" par Suzanne Beth; une discussion à quatre voix entre les commissaires de l'expo "Désoeuvrer la valeur", François Lemieux, Marilou Lemmens, Bern Tze et moi-même; et finalement une recension de "The Great Offshore", un ouvrage collectif portant sur les rapports entre art et finance dirigé par le collectif RYBN.
This is a fable, an untrue balance. Start again. This is an explicitly abstract account of an event that couldn’t count because people weren’t speaking the same language.
Books by Joel E Mason
Thesis Chapters by Joel E Mason
It seeks this forwarding by articulating a new role for formality in the world through the perversion of the discourse of the philosophy of engineering (one already happening, partially, within itself). This thesis is interested in the hypothesis that (1) there is nothing proprietary in informality’s production of the social economic conditions associated with it, (2) formality may then play a role in such productions, augmenting key functional aspects, such as the option for endurance, and adding to the field its own expressive inventions, not only without hampering or dislodging what Denise Ferreira da Silva calls the poethical, but perhaps revealing how it participates in the poethical, and (3) that an articulation of such a role will reveal new frameworks for organizational design tout court, frames able to ripple through practices and disciplines previously thought to be discrete and siloed.
“The total configuration of human experience requires other forms”
- Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism, pg. 167
Talks by Joel E Mason
Ce dossier a été réalisé en partenariat avec VOX, centre de l'image contemporaine dans le cadre de l'exposition "L’imaginaire radical II : désœuvrer la valeur/Reclaiming Value." Il inclut: une analyse par Anna Longo de l'installation cinématographique "The Everted Capital" de Fabien Giraud & Raphaël Siboni; un essai sur les DAOs et le monde de l'art signée Calum Bowden et Laura Lotti; une recension de David Thomas du dernier roman de Kim Stanley Robinson, "The Ministry for the Future"; Joel Mason qui jamme dans les pourtours du dernier opus de @Fred Moten et Stefano Harney, All Incomplete; un essai sur la troublante trilogie cinématographique “Fukushima Camera" par Suzanne Beth; une discussion à quatre voix entre les commissaires de l'expo "Désoeuvrer la valeur", François Lemieux, Marilou Lemmens, Bern Tze et moi-même; et finalement une recension de "The Great Offshore", un ouvrage collectif portant sur les rapports entre art et finance dirigé par le collectif RYBN.
This is a fable, an untrue balance. Start again. This is an explicitly abstract account of an event that couldn’t count because people weren’t speaking the same language.
It seeks this forwarding by articulating a new role for formality in the world through the perversion of the discourse of the philosophy of engineering (one already happening, partially, within itself). This thesis is interested in the hypothesis that (1) there is nothing proprietary in informality’s production of the social economic conditions associated with it, (2) formality may then play a role in such productions, augmenting key functional aspects, such as the option for endurance, and adding to the field its own expressive inventions, not only without hampering or dislodging what Denise Ferreira da Silva calls the poethical, but perhaps revealing how it participates in the poethical, and (3) that an articulation of such a role will reveal new frameworks for organizational design tout court, frames able to ripple through practices and disciplines previously thought to be discrete and siloed.
“The total configuration of human experience requires other forms”
- Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism, pg. 167