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This symposion is the retroactive manifesto of Breedster's enterprise: it untangles theories, tactics and dissimulations to establish the desires of Breedster's collective unconscious as realities in the Grid.

How to write a manifesto in an age disgusted with them? The fatal weakness of manifestos is their inherent lack of evidence. Breedster's problem is the opposite: it is a mountain range of evidence without manifesto.

In terms of structure, this symposion is a simulacrum of Breedster's Grid: a collection of blocks whose proximity and juxtaposition reinforce their separate meanings.

Breedster is a theatre of progress. Its protagonists are the "exterminating principles which, with constantly augmenting force, would never cease to act." Its plot is: barbarism giving way to refinement.

From these givens, its future can be extrapolated forever: since the exterminating principles never cease to act, it follows that what is refinement one moment will be barbarism the next.

Therefore, the performance can never end or even progress in the conventional sense of dramatic plotting; it can only be the cyclic restatement of a single theme: creation and destruction irrevocably interlocked, endlessly reenacted. The only suspense in the spectacle comes from the constantly escalating intensity of the performance.

Background material

grid.png - 965 kB, 3520x3520 pixels

Snapshot of the Grid at its largest size (352x352 tiles) on 2005-05-06 0:00. Tiles are 10x10 pixels, members are displayed at 50% their original size.

grid.avi - 6.8 MB, 352x352 pixels, DivX encoded

Animation of hourly Grid snapshots taken from 2004-04-09 02:00 until 2004-05-22 12:00, at 10 fps.