Week 37: Internacional Errorista
Frederico: Hello
Scott: Hello there!
Frederico: Hello, Hi, how are you?
Scott: Excellent thanks
Jeremy: hola
Frederico: Jeremy, are you here?
Jeremy: Yes
[pause]
Jeremy: Some small children eh?
Scott: Yeah, that's my three year-old in the background
Jeremy: You're from [inaudible 0:00:47.0]
Frederico: What? No, in my home
[pause]
This is Scott's daughter here.
Scott: Ahh, yes, I'm hosting the audio remotely today, there's a bunch of people at the Basekamp space in Philadelphia, and a number of the other people that are on the call are from all over the place, some of their phones are still ringing, so we'll just sort of let that go, but any case; we might as well get started and if anyone gets dropped from the call please just give a shout in the text and let us know and we can go ahead and just keep going over the next hour and a half.
So anyway, welcome, Federico, and Loretta and Jeremy, it's really great to have you guys, welcome to another week in this series of talks where we're looking at a different example of a plausible art world each week. Every Tuesday night in 2010. You guys are this week's example and I know we'll be talking soon enough together at the Creative Time Summit, and we're really excited to have you guys there. So I don't know how many of you were able to read the intro page to the Errorists, but we also have a bunch of other links too, some videos that you made, and I'd like to post those at some point. And if you wouldn't mind going ahead and giving an intro to you guys, when and how you got started, and how you construct your art world.
Frederico: Wait a second, did you manage to make the video link? Which video link?
Jeremy: No, no tenemos el video
Scott: Yeah, we didn't actually add it yet, I'll go ahead and post that in a minute, I just wanted to, ohh it's ok, I mentioned something a moment ago.
I was thinking of this one just in case
Frederico: Ok, just to open the conversation a little bit. Thank you for the invitation to participate in this kind of meeting for us, it's a new experience and I think we feel very comfortable and I think we can show in the next one before we didn't know if we didn't send you sometimes, emails to try and be in contact and make this experience, but unfortunately we didn't find the moment, and now well, anyway, we are here, in Buenos Aires, not so far away.
So here it is half-past seven, and we want to try to go in this conversation, we would like to talk about something; not only about error, but the point of view of error that we have been trying to develop since some time ago. Now, we understand it's an important moment to understand how important it is at this time - the idea of error and how it can change our life if we can take care of it. For example here, we see how the relation of the new laws to control the society for example, this kind of anti-terrorist law that was operating here with this concept and this illogic of terror and error. Error was used to explain to the society how the system was operating in that moment, it was always the pretext of mistake, they say it was a mistake in the London underground, and the invasion to Iraq, and all of the last wars we have in the world. So, for the moment we see that in Buenos Aires it is the same sensation, and we have always, the justification after the action is error. So we discovered this word is working very well for this planification of the system, in the sense of the domination. Then, we say why we cannot recover the error as the real idea of error, you understand what I'm talking about? I say Why we have to fight to recover the error? Why error is now this very usable word. So for us, error is when we put in our flag; when we write errorismo, and we go to the streets of different places and demonstrations, or not, just walking around.
We try to demonstrate something, but at the same time, we try to live our life in another way. I think we are working here on two sides, one side; is this problematic, and this conflict about the error and the war on terror. On the other hand, we have this point of view, this philosophical point of view about error. For us it's not so easy, but at the same time, we enjoy the situation because we feel it's very contemporary in our context, in our life.
Jeremy: I think it's like some error we just want denounce, I don't know if it's a massacre in Gaza, we want to say; they say it's an error, but we don't think it's errorist.
In other place it's say if you just do what are the right things and jump to don't lie because it's all big [inaudible 0:08:49.5]. So, the error it's a capacity to liberate.
Loretta: At the same time, the problem here, in the 70s, after all the [generation? 0:09:08.4] who tried to develop a new system, like in Argentina, or Chile, the situation was criminalized after years as an error. A year built a socialist system here in our countries was taken as an error, so we took that word as a key to start again, trying to develop another kind of society. In a way it's a word to open a new debate about what kind of society we want, and it's a very good word for us to talk about this super successful society we had in our lives as capitalist system, or neo-liberalist system. It is a very good key word for us when we're talking about this art media space, because it's also a very hard and strong micro-world who put us under pressure to be successful and hyper-productive. So in that way, error made us a new way to work as an artist and also to think what kind of militants we want to create, what kind of life we want to have when we mix militants, political-militancy and art, so in that way, error for us is a very good way to escape sometimes from our life and work conditions.
Scott: Loretta, do you mean the worker conditions, and life conditions that expect zero error?
Loretta: Yes, exactly
Frederico: I'm sorry for interruption, but I think this is the principle idea we are fighting against, is the idea of successful, to be a success. This is a real problem in our country, and I think around the world it is the same. What does it mean to day to be successful? What is finding the happiness in this way? and why do we always try to go in this way and, maybe we can say it's not our choice, it's not our, you know? But it's a common stereotype in life. So, I think the problem of the education, when we teach children, and when they make some mistake, what is the way we have to take in this case? We have to make more reparation, we have to, and here, this is very problematic because in that [inaudible 0:12:17.6] of education, the now generation they are teaching us, they are very rebellious, they are more alive than us. For us, I don't know, I'm just 31 years, so for my generation we had to fight a lot to find some way in 2001 the country explode, and then in that moment we feel we are very close to some real change, and then a new liberal system came again, the people start to trust the banks and all this stuff, the history you know, so at the moment, what can we say? What's a failure? What's an error?
Scott: I'm curious, if you don't mind me asking, maybe you can both [inaudible 0:13:06.9] for later, but it's starting to get into it a bit, but I'm curious - you mentioned earlier the debate, the discussion that's been coming out of your approach about what kinds of societies you like to be a part of, or micro-worlds. I was curious what's come out of that so far.
Jeremy: Qué dijo?
Loretta: Can you repeat what you said before because it was a little bit... so we try to understand.
Scott: Oh, you want me to repeat? Sorry, my mistake; I was wondering if you mentioned earlier about the approach that you've taken in questioning the meaning of success and the meaning of what's right by being errorists, that's an interesting discussion about what kinds of societies you would like to be a part of and contribute, and what micro-worlds you would like to see, and I was just curious how that discussion and debate has been going so far.
Jeremy: Osea que llemos a...
Loretta: Yes, I think now for us, it's a big big discussion because we are trying to create this kind of international errorist movement. Many people around the world are trying to approach this idea, and during these five years we have continued with this idea of errorist. Many groups are starting to have discussions with us about what it means to create a movement in this movement of the world, and at the same time, what means support an idea and an errorist and what it means also to talk about error or mistake or failure. So, that is an interesting moment for us because it's more deeper discussion about what means this term of errorist. In that way, we are in a moment to be open to hear what kinds of answers are given to us, in the middle of all this kind of discussion, because it's very open, for example, last year, we know about one group in Turkey who is supporting this idea of errorist, but we don't know what kind of practice they want to have about errorist, so what's been interesting to know about what they are doing about it, but we don't know about what kind of political ideas they have in their bags. So, it's that kind of strange situation because it's a very open moment to discover what kid of real or possibilities this errorist movement has, or if it's just a passing of one idea to build a movement. What is happening with that kind of situation. I don't know if I answered well, I'm sorry.
Jeremy: I don't know, just I think it's just like, just not the same thing with all the militant rights will say we have a new man and a perfect man, he's a socialist, so just I think it's a break this idea, it's not new, but I think we are in this break.. It's not much to just want society or one perfect woman or man for the... yep, so we do...
[laughter]
Frederico: Jeremy, are you there?
Scott: Just to clarify for people who are listening to the audio but are not following the chat as much, I was just asking, what does it mean to support the idea of errorism, in your opinion, what's the best way for a group of people to begin going about that? and Frederico was just saying, "in my opinion is to recover the "ism"" and I'm curious what you mean by that.
Frederico: Well, I say that just as one shot just to open the debate about that, but you know the idea, the problem for example, in South America is all the process of these countries in the 70s was related to an idealistic dream of some revolution. After that, the new big idea dominating all the media and the society is the failure of that idea. That process was over, all the guerillas and the revolutionary movements were destroying and imposing a dictation and all this stuff, you know that. So, for us in this context, when we recognize, when we use one term as errorism, it's very strong because you can see how criminalized it is, the stereotype of Latin American terrorists, it's a very complicated moment, for example in Chile, Mapuches, they are originally people from there, and they are totally criminalized and under the law of the terrorist criminal. So, that is, for us, when I say recover the "ism" it's because you have in the history of all the avant-gardes, they use -- after that postmodern times, we cannot believe, we cannot trust in any "ism", "ism" is over. Because post modernity creates that sensation that nothing new can be created. When I say recover this "ism" or create that kind of "ism" for us it's important because it's not easy to think in this kinds of issues here, and well anyway, what can I say
Loretta: Also because when we start with our group, we are part also from etcetera, so when we started with the group etcetera in the 90s, it was a discussion for us about this close history time. About what was happening with history, what was happening with art, what was happening with the creativity, and what was happening with the politics. When we started as a group, it was very difficult to be involved with art and politics at the same time because the word politic politica was forbidden -- not forbidden, but it was a very bad word to talk about.
Scott: Got ya
Loretta: So, for that reason, we keep this idea of this old way of making politics as also as a key to open debates and also as a key to open a new possibility for on one hand to have a communication, on another hand to discuss about what we are doing in our life, and what to [expect? 0:22:33.7] about our futures, and what to [expect? 0:22:37.5] about this future thinking in the past and also what was the real failure of all the systems, what we think were failures or mistakes. I think we are not alone in that, I think after 2001, many of us are pushing to have this discussion because we are pushing to try to understand what was happening in the twenty years before that. In that way, talk about "ism" talk about movement, and using this way of metaphoric way to talk about politics opens a good possibility to talk about things that people are afraid to talk about. Error, for us, is very interesting to start to talk about terror but at the same time to talk about what was happening also with this process of the 70s and also this new possible process about guerilla or kind of idea of revolution as in the past. It's a good way to open this closed ---
Frederico: I think at the same time -- when we use to play with the stereotypes that a very well created by the mass media, we understood this is a our opportunity to try to take a little kind of power of representation because we fight against representation, but with errorism we can create these kind of fake identities, transitory identities, totally open -- but sometimes we are afraid about the [inaudible 0:25:02.1] we make some kinds of workshops about error and we find a lot of young guys they feel involved and they try to play with this concept of errorism but then we feel it's important to going on to the background part of this society and see how we can open this idea of one international movement in this moment when nobody with believes in that, this is complicated but at the same time it's good, if you see the [inaudible 0:25:53.4] --
Scott: It seems like, in a sense you're using terms specifically that you don't agree with in order to interrogate them, or to bring the discussion to the floor; but at the same time, it does seem like there's something that you wish to recover, or there's a surplus that you'd like to take some advantage of or connect in some way, and one of those it sounds like, it is a real genuine desire is to connect people who are interested in reimagining the world in different ways from all over the world. That's what my understanding is, do you think that that's true? I realize that you guys are playing with language, but I'm not really under the impression that it's all tongue-in-cheek.
[silence]
Did you hear me ok? Do you need me to repeat that at all?
Frederico: Excuse me, I'm trying to read the chat.
Jeremy: I don't know what they think about terrorism because USA is a country was speak about anti-terrorism and it's a real, some with real presence, and so we have a lot of things to know about...
[Silence]
[Loretta laughs]
Scott: I guess my main question is the way I understand you use.
I'm going to frame this in a slightly different way.
The way I understand you use language and employ terms that have implications that you wouldn't necessarily agree with in order to bring about a wider and more broader discussion. Many things may have multiple meanings to that it actually instigates or kind of prods, a sometimes uncomfortable discussion; at the same time, what you were just talking about—the interest to connect people all over the world who have overlapping interests, specifically overlapping interests in questioning what it means to be right or what the good life is—basically how we should live, essential questions about constructing societies, and even, in your words, micro-societies as well, that to me seems like a genuine pursuit, is that too strange of a questions to ask? I guess I'm curious to clarify that and I was curious about what kinds of interests you have in connecting with other people who have similar ideas or who are questioning similar things.
Frederico: This is the principle idea of our idea is this one you said: connecting people and making these kinds of contacts. First, you said something interesting about the terms that we use, or we cannot use, but we do, or do not agree with it, or the conceptions and this is interesting for me because I think when we have to contact or connect people through this idea of error and errorism, it's incredibly easy. In my case, I don't know, but sometimes I talk about that and I feel it's a very positive moment to speak about error in the life, and how error is working in this context and this society. For example, we don't want to create a group of errorists because here we have a lot of people, individuals, groups, collectives, and we can deal and make things together or not. But, the problem is the problem of how we can play this global and international situation. What you say to connect people is interesting because in the actions we organize here in Buenos Aires a lot of people are involved here and they take the risk, they go to the streets with us and we live the experience together. Then, our idea is these people, when they're back in their countries, they can develop something there, with this experience we have here, they can bring the experience to our micro-community, but in this case, the way to work in this kind of community I think is taking care of the sensibility and this [inaudible 0:32:01.0] part of the relationships. When we said in the beginning of the conversation, our main idea is to fight against success, now I think it's the same because we are in a really competitive society; for that reason, error is very popular now, because losers [inaudible 0:32:24.6] they don't want to be losers, and they fight for that. So for this reason I think if we take the way of making not an international movement, and we make a kind of new-age religion, we will be also very [inaudible 0:32:44.3]. Sorry for my long speech.
Scott: No, it's really interesting, and in a sense, I'm curious...
[Child laughing]
How someone might start a group of errorists, was because you were talking about some people who I wasn't sure exactly where. I didn't hear exactly where, but you said that there were some people who wanted to do this but you weren't exactly sure where they were coming from.
[Child talking on microphone]
Frederico: For example the case, some interesting cases for us we discovered last time, was a performance or music band, group in London, the errorists, they are three guys. We find that on the internet checking on Google searching for something about error and we find them and we find their manifesto that they wrote interesting, and also their music, their experimental music, so this is one case, another interesting case is in France, in Marseille, in an independent newspaper called [Newspaper name 0:34:52.2], it's a very interesting newspaper made by very great people, they're are like our family there, so they support errorism since a long time ago, and it was interesting because they use to publish some things about errorism in France, and this guy Jeremy who is now in the conversation with us was there because he is from France and he was involved with them. So [inaudible 0:35:26.9] but the problem is we don't have any head, we don't have a main control of the situation, and we don't want to have that. But at the same time we need to do something, for this reasons, maybe we have to create—we are working on that, some kind of website, or something to try to concentrate this energy of error, but you know it's difficult.
Jeremy: In each country they do something really different. I saw the video in the south of France, and it's really different to what we do in Buenos Aires, it's more violent, it's not bad, not good, it's just other things. The actions we do, we just have a really good relationship with the population - la gente al lado.
Frederico: Just to say something - I'm reading the chat there...
Scott: To me that sounds like an appropriation of that term —
Frederico: No, no, of course, this is —
Scott: when a major, when a powerful entity sees that language has some disruptive power, you know it usually is a good idea to recoup that, or try to in some why by organization, you know.
Frederico: The conflictive point for me is not only accepting the error, because accepting error is easy, you can go to pray to the church or something like this, accepting error is not complicated, the complicated point is living in error, making error your life, accepting error as something natural and not, you know. So when I say the critic about how competitive the capitalist system is today, everybody reshaped the error, it's not my crazy idea, it's what I see every day in my life, even if the people are very open minded, it happens the same, so it's complicated because nobody wants to accept we are going in the wrong way—our society. We are going in the wrong way so if we accept that, maybe errorism is a term very usable—we can use it in a lot of ways.
Scott: Absolutely, yes.
Frederico: We don't want to make this a very superficial situation, errorism is very easy to transform in some fashion, some stupid thing; so for reason we have to take care o that.
Loretta: Also it's very interesting how media and how error is to save their own system. They always say "This was a big mistake, how can we fix this mistake? We are trying to fix this mistake", the problem is for example when we wrote the first manifesto, we said we want to take error with the conscious of error; that means you are responsible of your errors. The power always escapes from their mistakes, saying at the last way "we are doing mistakes". We call that our not errorist mistakes, and that was one of the first points we used in our first manifesto in 2005. The media use the way to save this; for example how they save their legal problems, the guilt situation, taking as an error some plans they are making before; kill many people in one country, or making wars in Iraq, or whatever, they use that they make mistake, but what happens when somebody makes a mistake and is involved in a legal situation. For example, we had a workshop one year ago in Columbia, and one of our students is now in jail because he did a stupid mistake on Facebook, now he's in jail and he tried to defend himself saying "It was an error" and that, in the legal situation, in Columbia is not something that makes him escape from his legal problem now. So what happens with error to the people who don't have power? When the power use the error; for that reason, as you said before about the stereotypes made by the mass media, we use also in our actions, we use and we put evidence how this creates a stereotype and how the words error and mistake are used to build more power also. We use these two ways of error; one as a way to liberation, and one as a key used by power to dominate, for example now in Argentina and in all of Latin America we are celebrate 200 years of independence, and we call that independence was really planning error, because it's not independence.
Frederico: But that started with Christopher Columbus, that's a long time ago, we was look for India and he arrived here; in our condition this is very... somebody is writing here, sorry.
[quiet while reading text on chat]
Frederico: This is a kind of break, I want to share a link with you. Scott?
Scott: Yeah, we're here, I was sort of waiting in anticipation, it sounded like you were looking for a link or something, but I definitely have questions to ask.
Well there are a few things, I just didn't want to go in another direction is you're in thought here, but I was a little while ago, I was reading this discussion which turned out to be pretty elaborate discussion on the north/east-west-south website and there are a lot of things to say about this.
One thing I was interested in was last December you guys posted a video about urban errorist photography and as we're talking about this, I just keep wanting to get some kind of a picture of some of what you guys do, and that seems to be helping a little bit...
Frederico: It's pretty strange because I don't know if you have done something like that in Philadelphia, but here we have [Palestinian and the Israeli state 0:48:06.3] and you know, they are crossing one and another at his incredible, because when we discovered that it's a very urban errorist situation because at the same time, this point is under the control of Mossad, the secret service of Israel. When we discovered that we thought we must put some signal here, something to try to call the attention of the people because it's an incredible situation and for the people of the neighborhood it was amazing because they know that they are paranoid because they know why it's a danger, a problematic point in the city, but if you were working there nothing happens, but in the end it's controlled by cameras and some police force. It was strange because we organized the action only for twenty minutes because we cannot stay for long; the reaction of the people was interesting, and for us it was a crazy adventure because we tried to keep this city of Buenos Aires alive. It's difficult at the moment, but we try.
Scott: Sorry, Frederico, are these links to various public actions?
Frederico: Jeremy, Jeremy
Scott: We'll just take a look, I was wondering if you guys would be interested in describing some of the points from your manifesto that Steven describes, I'll type them in just so that we know what we're talking about.
I mean it may be self-explanatory, but when did that come about, I know we've gotten into some of this already, you've discussed some of this, but it seems that this is a succinct [inaudible 0:51:24.5] and I was curious if there was anything in here that you want to elaborate on.
But, you know I'm curious about how you feel about that now. I'm curious about how this concept, or this idea is working or not; what do you think in the United States, in the context of your country where you're living, what do you think about that? We can find some cells and people there?
Scott: I'd be curious to know what other people in the call think about that, I have media thoughts, but maybe you're asking about what people in the US think about what you've been talking about, maybe there's a cultural difference.
Frederico: Cultural difference, exactly.
Scott: I don't know, does anybody have any thoughts? I know a couple of you are from the US in addition to me.
[Daughter singing; Are you done Daddy?]
Frederico: Many of our reactions here in Latin America was because the Governmental decision during the last time, many reactions in the economic and social situation, so for this reason, for us it's very important to know if this context, this new situation in the United States is more flexible to organize or to do some things, I don't know, it's a simple questions; if you see the context, the situation more open to recover the public space, the public political activity and these kind of things.
Scott: That's definitely a really curious question; I'm partly interested, for instance Matthew and Greg, and other people on the call who I know deal with some of these issues in your work, I was curious if you had any immediate thoughts about that. I mean my initial response is that there's an idea of freedom in the United States; there's dissonance between the [inaudible 0:54:34.3] and the reality. For instance, like other places we have during major events there are distinct protest zones where one's allowed; sanction spaces where you're allowed to have dissent, which is kind of a funny idea. There is also this idea, but it's like a really twisted idea of the commons here in the US, we really don't have much of that. I mean there were times where that was an important idea, and depending on the government at the time, the administration, there are more or less "social programs" or "public spaces" and a lot of effort went into that. But during other times, it's the exact opposite, I mean your name, the International Error, obviously for people in the United States not coincidentally makes people think of terrorism and it's a way to play with that, of course, but just to let you know. I can give you a very localized anecdote, here in Philadelphia, this was the capital of the United States when it first unionized, and it's described as the cradle of liberty; we have, just a block away from Base Kamp, the Independence hall—where the Independence from Great Britain was signed, the Liberty Bell; (I don't want to make judgmental statements here so I'm trying to be very general) where it's a symbol of liberty in the United States at the very least, and there is immediately after the attacks on the World Trade Centre, symbols like that, that few people cared that much about suddenly became these national treasures that had been guarded with military might, really there these armed guards in front of these icons, these buildings, basically at this point are really just tourist centers. They have no political power, and hard to say they even have ideological power; Japanese tourists will come and take a lot of snapshots, school kids learn about it; United States history; it's not the Pentagon, you know, but yet we somehow felt it was important to station armed guards and actually put up all of these very difficult to maneuver pedestrian walk ways, and barricades, it really was pretty crazy, and so I think that's calmed down just a little bit in this administration, but it still is, from my point of view anyway, it's just telling that tiny story which I think is kind of funny, especially if this is such a small city for being a large city, it really has such a small city feel. It's not isolated to that though; everywhere I go and everyone I talk to in the United States, no matter where they are has experiences like that, and sees that in their locale.
So, I guess my answer to you is that I can't really speak on behalf of the United States, but I can say that I think that the name of the group and also the statements that you've made, and the actions that I've seen so far; the manifesto—what it is to me it's a kind of linguistic shock, it's a very tiny shock to the system, but an interesting side-step to approach this really difficult core problem of enforced competition. I think that it's a very interesting strategy to approach a competitive environment with the idea that where all these expectations on us cultural producers to artists or whatever are that we have to win, not only that, but we have to impress, we have to success; not that we have to, but if we don't we're losers, we won't be supported, we'll have to work day jobs, all kinds of things like that, so basically I'd like to approach this where we're going to focus specifically on error. Not as something to overcome like [inaudible 1:00:16.2]
[Daughter talking]
But, I think it's interesting, so anyway, my answer is, I do think it has a lot of potential here in the United States, will people turn into a meme? and have lots of Errorist cells? I really don't know, but I'm curious about how you could see that happening.
Frederico: Error is something here, there is a lot of things in common but not really seen with our reference of error. But I'm curious about that because I think everybody together is in error, it's very common to find the division, but it's important to find the point in common. I think the point in common that we have is that we are living in the same planet, and we are under the same economic system, and sometimes that means just to go back to this idea of error in our life; if we make a plan of some activities, or some experiences, and everything goes, we do something very spontaneous and then see what happens. Of course it's totally experimental, but at the same time, we take, maybe this is the point of, not the division, but the difference, because we are trying to provoke some political answer. We are trying to use the resources of the art, the theatre, the performance, or I don't know; just to create some reaction—in the beginning we were shocked by the reaction of the media and how they transformed our ideas within five minutes, but at the same time, we can't try to enter there and make something. So in this context it's interesting because error has the potential to provoke the political field, and in the everyday life.
[reading text chat]
Jeremy: If we speak; a lot of countries I think we must think about actions in a lot of countries, so the things is, maybe I'm not really interested in the sense of the error, but I think if we think about something concrete to do and also the country in the same moment, because we have unity of moment—not unity of the place, maybe we do something interesting.
The [inaudible 1:05:14.2] when they do a big error, they annoy everyone in the world, so why don't we respond? I mean...
[reading text chat]Qué dice?
Frederico: More people great, and fortunately more people will...
Jeremy: Hola?
Scott: Yes, we can hear you.
Jeremy: Se entienden el video o no?
[Scott's daughter: Daddy, I want a pen...
Mummy doesn't want you do draw inside that book
Why?
Because it's her book, you've got other books you can draw in,
But I want a book with dots, like this one, I really want the same book as Mommy
It's Mommy's book, if she says no, then no...]
Jeremy: Qué es capitalisma [inaudible 1:07:18.4]?
Scott: It seems to me that you guys are questioning, tell me if I'm right about this so to speak, but it seems like you're questioning not so much only what is right and what is wrong, but you're actually trying to define how these terms are used because they are so misused. They are so often used to mislead. Do you think there's anything to that, can you hear me ok?
Jeremy: No, muy mal, it cut, and I don't understand.
Scott: It seems to me that you're not so much debating only that things that dominant cultures tends to tell people are right; it seems that you're not only saying "That's wrong", although that does seem like it's part of it, or that things that people judge to be wrong are actually right or things that are successful are actually errors and vice versa; but it also seems like you're trying to play with the language itself because, not just to debate the actual point on which things are right and things are wrong, but interrogate the way language is used because it's so often used to mislead.
And so if we continue to use these terms the way they're normally used, in the colloquial sense, or even that something is an error, or it's not an error, or it's right, or it's incorrect; then it's seems to me that we're missing the point of what you guys are doing.
And I guess I'll just stop with this, because I guess this is a question more than a statement, it seems to me, well, why don't I just ask it as a question; Do you think that you want to provide an alternative to the definition of error; in addition to just redefining which things are or are not errors? Does that make sense?
[silence]
Guys are you still there?
I just read you're missing Frederico.
Hello, Frederico?
I was asking this question, and I asked it three different ways because I thought that you were there, and then I realized well you're not, maybe I'll just ask that one more time.
I'm just wondering because maybe we're just missing the point when we're discussing whether something is or is not an error, or it's right and it's wrong. It seems to me that maybe you're not only debating that certain things we're told are right and are actually not, or that certain things that are errors are really not, but maybe do you think that what you're attempting to do is provide an alternative definition to what error actually means so that we shouldn't really be debating whether or not something is or is not an error, but that you're questioning the use of that languages because it's so often used to mislead us?
Frederico: I don't know how we can definite what we want to do, but I think if we want to put some words in action. I don't know if it's a good explanation. This is not an escape from the questions, but this is for me the answer. We are taking this concept of this word because we feel this is flowing in there, and we try to take it, but at the same time put error in action. How do you put word in action?
Loretta: I think, when we start to do this, you know how we discover errorists, was because of a mistake. We were preparing this action for the missing of residents in Mar del Plata and we were creating an action, a theatrical act, for that meeting. In that time Bush was coming to Argentina, it was full of demonstrations so we decided to be there, and the idea was trying to recreate the image made by mass media, and the image we decided to recreate was the image that the mass media created about the Middle East, for us. So the image we had here by media was the image of people full of weapons, women with veils, men with kafiyas, and full of tanks and things like that; dangerous people, dangerous countries. So we decided to recreate a kind of guerilla, fake guerilla, or a fake terrorist group and we start to write the text for that theatre piece when one of our comrades arrived with the pen drive and the text, we open the word program, and the title was "Acción Terrorista", "Terrorist Action", but it was written in a wrong way, it said "Errorist Action", and immediately when we tried to correct that word, it showed us two links of the word; Errorist and Terrorist, for that was the situation, that was the way how we discovered this word, and how we started to play with Errorist, but then for us the first discussion about error and errorist was in this theatrical performance we did in Mar del Plata, because it was full of mistakes; what was happening around this theatrical action, and one of the most interesting things for us, after this experience of demonstration in Mar del Plata, we discovered a method we were playing as a theatrical group. we had two kinds of possibilities to open the game, and participation, so after we did that action, many people who were spectators started to be immediately part of this theatrical performance. Not only people in the street, also the people who arrived to catch us, because of our Errorist action. So I think one of the first keys we used to play with this word is connected with what the body practiced, we put our body in these political situation, or in this public space, we are using around the world, like in the streets or whatever.
Jeremy: Os piensas que se entiende algo de lo que hablamos en inglés? (Do you all think they understand what we're saying in English?)
Loretta: We are reading now what they are discussing in the chat.
Scott: Maybe it would be good to repeat the question from the chat just for people who can only access the audio. Sometimes people are away from their laptops, so it's a good idea to repeat the questions out loud.
I can go ahead and do that if you want, Matthew, do you want to go ahead an elaborate out loud, are you able to do that?
Matthew: I'm just trying to make the associations with what we were talking before about the distinction between Brazil and America, and I think that there's a [inaudible 1:19:36.0]and I'm finding it really interesting when the media sources don't play this role of just providing us with information but trying to allow us to negotiate the validity of the information that we're giving. I've notice in [inaudible 1:20:02.9] I feel is the most obvious one where you've got a pseudo-newscaster commenting on comments that are being made in the political realm, and obviously showing that they're blatant lies. It also playing this role about the[inaudible 1:20:24.7] at the same time. So I'm guess I'm making a lot of associations with that role and the[inaudible 1:20:35.1] in that it's on a comedy network, but it's kind of news and people are taking it more as news, and I kind of feel that this idea of error [inaudible 1:20:45.3] in this grey area of... so that it can be either or, or it can be both, and it's post humorous in a way, but it's really specific, and so I don't really have a questions, but I find it really interesting that these middle areas where they're trying to make them visible and at the same time make comments on really important issues, yet we're playing this tongue-in-cheek role.
Frederico: Matthew, thank you. Ok, sorry for the silence, I don't know. Thank you Matthew for your opinion. I don't want to moderate here, but...
Scott: It's ok, please do.
Frederico: But what can I say, I think what... sorry, I'm reading here.
[Silence]
Ahh, no no, please.
Jeremy: Qué dijo?
Frederico: [laughing]
Jeremy: No entiendo nada, qué es "I like"?
Frederico: Que está diciendo me estás escuchando...
Jeremy: Si te escucho...tratemos de traducir porque no he entendido nada (Can we try to translate it because I didn't understand anything.)
Frederico: [speaks in Spanish]
Excuse me guys please, I needed to speak in Spanish because he didn't understand, maybe in French, we can speak something in French. Anyway.
Scott: Yes, I'm curious about this too; how different people here define and understand error, because whether or not you guys wanted to answer that earlier, it still seems to me to be a very point to your project, is the kind of redefinition of what error actually means. Obviously it's a re-contextualization of it, but also, I think it's a redefinition in some way. Even if it's not a strict definition, it does seem to be some attempt there to approach, a different kind of approach.
Frederico: It's interesting because in commentary it said something like... you know the difference in our context for our country, if we compare it to situations; it's totally different because in this context, we cannot take like them the same kind of activities. Today, if we make this kind of experience, we are repeating something, that's the problem, I told you before, I don't want to close the discussion in this level of representation because I think we can create this errorism international, and everybody can do it, everyone can take the word and the concept in the way they want. When we go to the discussion of how is the situation with this term and why we take this like our flag, it's for one reason because we trust. In a way, we become a little bit fundamentalistic on error, and you say error [inaudible 1:27:06.3]. But I'm sure, because maybe we are inside the error right now, maybe we are losing the point, you know?
Scott: I just wanted to mention that we have three minutes before we end this chat. Even if we don't always start on time, we always end on time, but just for the sake of people who are something like 2am for them now. But I just wanted to mention that and say if anyone had any burning statements that they wanted to make as a kind of a bookmark for a follow up, because we will be following up, when you come to New York, that this would be one of those discussion among other discussions from past weeks; but this one in particular would be good to follow up on between now and October 10th, which is when we'll actually be discussing this again in person.
Frederico: There would be a real [inaudible 1:28:53.6] situation.
Scott: Indeed. Well, it's been really great...
Frederico: I would make my [inaudible 1:29:03.8] to be a real errorist. Please help me, I will try to call you.
Scott: Frederico, if you want to send things by e-mail, the best ways to do that, are either to send it to the discussion list, or you can also send it, if you want to, I don't know if you actually feel like doing this, but there's comments at the bottom of that page which is a really good place to add extra information. We often add things like a link to the audio afterwards, or things like that. So if you have follow up stuff, that's a great place, and we can also post it to the list. But that will get some more people.
It was really great having you guys to discuss the International Errorists tonight.
Frederico: Listen, listen one question, when will we have the next, what is the program? Because I want to show you next time, please send me the program to my e-mail address.
Loretta: Thanks to everybody and we hope we can create a new language so we can speak errorism next week, it will easier for us to speak and explain more things.
Scott: We do need to create a new language, don't we.
Have a great evening, and we'll see you soon.