University of the Phoenix
Conveniently situated along the veil between this world and the next, the University of the Phoenix (not to be mistaken for the American for-profit educational institution with an almost identical name) is the world’s first “for prophet” university teaching the dead and not-yet-dead to rise up together to avenge the crimes and cruelties of global capitalism. The names Cassie Thronton (artist) and Max Haiven (researcher) are often associated with the University, and its initiatives often closely resemble performative, participatory and ritualistic artworks, though none of these allegations can be confirmed. Since 2017 the University has been rumored to have appeared at art exhibitions, academic conferences, protest events and other arcane ceremonies in Amsterdam, Berlin, Puerto Rico, San Francisco, Seville and Vienna. The activities of the University are often funny, but never a joke. Abstract
Since 2017 the University of the Phoenix has appeared like a pedagogical apparition at the invitation of several galleries, arts institutions, educational venues and, frequently, uninvited where least expected. The University often works with the form of the “performance-ritual.” Examples have included: teaching art workers to collaborate with ghosts and gut microbes to vomit on command on border checkpoints that enforce global apartheid; working with the seeds of a vengeful tree, the immortal stranger, to imagine children’s revenge on adults for ruining the planet; collaboratively creating a curse to destroy Amazon with thousands of its hyper-exploited digital workers, then lacing it throughout the corporation’s systems; and working with under-housed flamenco dancers to strike back against a crooked bank that threatened their livlihoods and a wildlife preserve. |
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Click on the image to see The Curse of Amazon.
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The Curse of Amazon
The *Curse of Amazon* was woven by an uncertain number of Mechanical Turk workers to abolish Amazon and was encoded by these very workers in text fragments into Amazon’s empire, sometimes appearing visibly in the user comments of Amazon’s hegemonic marketplace, at other times smuggled into code and laced throughout the vast netherworld of Amazon’s servers. When assembled in a digital form (as it is throughout Amazon’s empire) the curse is extremely powerful. This digital video accompanies two analogue artifacts (a hand-written book and a phonograph record), containing the only complete renditions of the curse, which were originally exhibited in November of 2020 in Berlin at the SILENT WORKS exhibtion curated by the Berliner Gazette. |
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The Order of the Immortal Stranger
In October of 2019 the University of the Phoenix was commissioned by the Berliner Gazette to develop a performance-ritual for the opening of their MORE WORLD conference in Berlin. “A story from a potential future when children rebel against adults who have destroyed the planet with the help of the Immortal Stranger, the mysterious vengeful plant (invasive species) who is president of the University.” Click on image to the left for audio. |
Throwing Up Ghosts Against the Border In December of 2018 The University of the Phoenix was commissioned to develop a performance-ritual as part of the Applied Microperformativity Symposium at the Angewandte Innovation Laboratory of the University for the Applied Arts, Vienna. “Have you ever wanted to vomit on an L3 bodyscanner? In this participatory lecture-performance the University for the Phoenix taught not-yet-dead learners to host unique collaborations between intestinal flora and the vengeful spirits of the dead in order to weaponize their bodily fluids against the modern border technologies that are perpetuating global apartheid regimes.” |
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