'Grey Goo’ is a hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario involving molecular nano-technology in which out-of-control self-replicating robots consume all matter on Earth while building more of themselves. This spectacularly dystopian meme not only provides a Sci Fi analogue for the carnage reaped by capital accumulation, but also conceives of its residue – a world not definitively destroyed, but degenerated into a mass of undifferentiated, yet still active goo. The goo’s combination of inhuman self-replication and destruction is an instance of how the pop imaginary conceives of The End. Not as an interruption ushering in the transvaluation of all values, but as an infinite extension of more of the same old shit. Writers in this issue of Mute also recognise the likelihood of this gooey scenario in which crisis doesn’t automatically release us from our current conditions but may well simply deepen them. Soberly examining the general deployment of endings, from Hollywood disaster movies to anti-capitalist theory to the manipulation of climate-change panic, this issue of Mute puts an end to the endgames.
2010-04, ISSN 1356-7748-215 & ISBN 9781906496456
FURTHER DESCRIPTION
Crisis at the ICA
J.J. Charlesworth on why the ICA's crisis is not an accident of recession
An End Without End
Evan Calder Williams takes aim at Hollywood's world-affirming vision of The End
Apocalypse, Tendency, Crisis
Benjamin Noys urges us to rethink radical theory's apocalyptical tone
Post-Crunch Futures (Part II)
We continue our fiction series extrapolating the impact of the credit crunch and techno-capitalism into a deadly near future − with stories by Matthew Fuller and Anthony Iles
Artist's Project: Steganographia
By Martin Howse
How Not To Be an Atheist
Ben Pritchett picks apart the jumbled relation between ethics, new media and subjectivity
Hung, Drawn and Quartered
Owen Hatherley on 'urban renaissance' and its discontents, and its not-so-discontents
Against Representation
Noise artist Mattin probes the enigma of radical performativity
Hopenhagen Against Hope
Ilya Lipkin on COP15's attempt to commodify disaster and hope
Illustrations
Tim Goldie, Caroline Heron
ISSN 1356-7748-215
ISBN 978-1-906496-45-6
Dimensions: 22.4 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm
134 pages