NOMAD ASSOCIATION OF AUTONOMOUS ASTRONAUTS
escape from dimensionality
reading / performance, clerkenwell literary festival, farringdon, london (07.98)

companion text >>

IN SPACE, EVERYONE CAN HEAR YOU DREAM
The Second Meditation of the Nomad Association of Autonomous Astronauts

The seemingly unstoppable growth of global consumerism and the rise of the multinationals as the new superpowers simply serves to enforce the collective desire to horde, to gather and to protect. The notion that by the exchange of value-infested tokens we can somehow 'own' material goods and property is a necessary myth in order to convince us to look down, to look away and to stay grounded by keeping our heads ferociously buried in the sand. By focusing so much on the empire we build around us, consumerism forces us into a corner of our own construction - we become ensconced in camps, surrounded by high-wire perimeter fences, and as much as we convince ourselves that we are building a protective shell, we are actually building our own prison cell. The nomad naturally has no affinity to an anchor of "place" and hence, in order to effect such true nomadism, the Nomad AAA seeks to overcome the mechanisms of materialism.

The rise of electronic mail and of the communal so-coined "cybercafe" has allowed the Nomad AAA to affect a hitherto unrealisable dream - to rid themselves of the necessity of ownership whilst still being able to communicate on a global scale. It simultaneously empowers the Nomad AAA to remain at large, to move wherever and whenever it dares to dream, to be in touch whilst simultaneously dropping out of what we commonly refer to as society. Such a state of bliss is akin to what the Nomad AAA hopes to experience in space - travelling, exploring and reaching out without reference to here and now, without the need to further consume and without the need to chain oneself to a co-ordinate in order to remain in contact.

By thus relinquishing all frames of reference to the earthbound self, the Nomad AAA skip, hops and jumps onto an evolutionary crest that carries themselves, along with the flourishing AAA community world-wide, towards a future diametrically opposed to our current state of being. Such a vision naturally confuses and irritates the WoMan on the ground, and it is for that specific reason that the Nomad AAA undertakes to promote, cajole and vociferously challenge today's status quo until those that hold the reins of our terran harnesses deign to yield their control.

stuart b, March 1998 C.E.
 
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