Stuff that went down today

Quick update and record of what went down today and plans going forward for us all:

1. RATIONALE

We began streamlining our extensive thoughts into a rationale, which went something like this:

"Happiness as a goal is widely functioning as a normative and atomising force, furthering and being used to further unexamined participation in capitalist lifestyles"

Not sure about 'lifestyles' myself - not full enough? Lifestyle is part of this but it is about the whole system - production and consumption. Us as participants in producing, consuming and reproducing..

We went on to break down themes/points within this, such as the objectification of happiness (as Will Davies talks about), the atomisation of the project as individual responsibility/opportunity (and failing if you don't manage to be happy - see pathologising of unhappiness, both Davies and Sara Ahmed talk about this), and normative function of happiness when happiness is embodied by certain lives, lifestyles and goods (which fit in with marketable hegemony).

Think Josh is doing a fuller version of this to post, so we can collaborate on bashing it out properly.

2. ANTI-VERT

Started collecting clips for our anti-vert. We are downloading these via keepvid.com (incredibly easy) and then saving on shared 'life a users manual' google drive so everyone not in London can have a look and add to.

3. TOMORROW
 
Pen-rage and interviews - 2 groups heading out, one to Peckham and other to Canary Wharf. We will split time pen-raging and also interview as wide a range of people as we can, poking around with our rationale.

%$*&^()(*)_)(_"$£&&~@:~

Finally, here's Guy Debord calling the Apple helpline, sort of. This is this home-made anti-slick vibe I like and think we could consider in our works (maybe as well as slick one..). It's quite amazing what the Apple guy starts saying at the end of the call, playing into the fetishisation of commodity point. Maybe we should make some calls for our anti-vert audio..