<nettime> AAA Intergalactic Conference

[Konrad Becker <konrad@t0.or.at>]

Space is the place!!!


Association of Autonomous Astronauts' Intergalactic
Conference in Vienna, Earth, June 21-22 1997

Public Netbase Media~Space! Vienna, Austria
http://www.t0.or.at/aaa

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

SATURDAY 21 JUNE MUSEUMSQUARTIER HALLE D 

12:00 -15:00
Informal gathering of Autonomous Astronauts. A recruitment drive aimed at
the local community in Vienna, a chance for people to come and discuss the
possibilities of independent, community-based space travel in a relaxed
atmosphere.

17:00 -20:00
Opening and launching ceremony of the "Dreamtime Space Ship" built in
cooperation with the Childrens Museum Vienna. AAA Promotion Videos und
music for guests of ALL ages. 
DJ pita , lo-res (live) 
Public Internet Access and launching of http://aaa.t0.or.at
As part of the Association of Autonomous Astronauts' Intergalactic
Conference in Vienna, a web site will be designed and built by a selected
group of Viennese children. 
A group of 15 kids travel to the future to take over the abandoned Russian
space station Mir. The station, originally designed by the unimaginative
engineers of a government funded space program, is transformed by the
childrens' wild activities into an orbiting palace of mayhem and fun.

20:30 - 22:30

Formal presentations as part of a discussion about independent space
exploration 
Supported by the Institute for Space-eploration of the Academy of Science,
Vienna.

Special Guest Speaker:  

Fiorella Terenzi (University of San Diego/USA)
"Space Travel In the Invisible Universe"
Astrophysicist und musician <www.fiorella.com> 

"Astrophysicist Fiorella Terenzi, a cross between Madonna and Carl Sagan." 
Time Magazine 


AAA keynote speakers:

Jason Skeet Inner City AAA
Skeet will give an overview of the AAA project, discussing some of the
various directions that the AAA is travelling in.

John Eden Raido AAA
Eden is a press officer for the AAA and will demonstrate AAA media invasion
exercises and tactics for the information war against government funded
space agencies throughout the universe.

Patric O'Brien East London AAA
O'Brien will detail plans to create a new cultural renaissance, in which
everyone may be able to achieve space travel.

~~~~~~~~

Prof. Werner W. Weiss  (Astronomical Institute, University Vienna) 
"Scientific Exploitation of Space"

Institute for Longdistance Flights, Vienna
Projectpresentation 

23:00 - ?
Black Hole Supersonic Practice:
Zero Gravity Party with
Praxis DJ Squad (London) feat. :
A.N.T.I. (Harshkore, Bretagne/F),
Somatic Responses (Wales/UK),
The Jackal (The World),
Somatic Responses live,
Society of Unknowns vs.Hidden Resistance (London)
Liza'n'Eliaz (Belgium)
+ Cybercore, Moeser, Zoff and more...

Here Comes Everybody!

SUNDAY 22 JUNE  

12:00- 17:00
A trip to the moon is scheduled for the mid-morning. John Eden will conduct
astral projection exercises, after which explorers will be split into three
groups and issued with a map of the moon. Using this map they must go into
the urban environment of Vienna and find a suitable place on the moon for a
game of three-sided football.

Introduction to three-sided football by Patric O'Brien, member of the
Luther Blissett Three Sided Football League, followed by a game of
three-sided football. The rest of the afternoon will include an Autonomous
Astronaut
pic-nic .

"Only those that attempt the impossible will achieve the absurd."


Space Travel - By Any Means Necessary

An Introduction to the Association of Autonomous Astronauts' Intergalactic
Conference in Vienna, Earth, June 21-22 1997

by Jason Skeet, Inner City AAA


The Association of Autonomous Astronauts (AAA) was launched on April 23rd
1995 as the world's first independent and community-based space program. A
Five Year Plan was also established for creating, by the year 2000, a
world-wide network of local, community-based AAA groups dedicated to
building their own spaceships. In order to expand this project, the AAA has
organised an Intergalactic Conference on independent, community-based space
travel, that will take place in Vienna, Earth June 21-22 1997 at Public
Netbase Media~Space! 
This conference will bring together various strands within the Association of
Autonomous Astronauts, for further cross-fertilisation of ideas and
experiences, demonstrating the varied and at times contradictory movements
Autonomous Astronauts make whilst escaping from gravity. The conference
will also expose local communities in Vienna to the possibilities of
independent space exploration. Indeed, this Intergalactic Conference will
advance the AAA's aim to grow and develop in several directions at once.

One of the trajectories that the conference will trace is the new phase
that the AAA's Five Year Plan for creating a world-wide network of local,
community-based groups now moves into. We have called this phase the
Dreamtime, and it is in essence a transversalist concept which helps to
define the AAA's total opposition to other existing space programs. The
Dreamtime asks,"What is the point of going into space only to replicate
life on planet earth?" AAA groups around the world are now exploring what
kind of experimental modes of living Autonomous Astronauts will create in
space, what new social relations will be formed, and what new activities
will fill up the empty spaces that had previously fixed the limits of life
back on planet earth. The Dreamtime regards space travel as an evolutionary
process which will inevitably lead to the extinction of present-day
government space agencies. Autonomous Astronauts will create an
extra-terrestrial consciousness that jettisons earth-based concepts of
national borders and state controls. Amongst other things, the AAA is
exploring how sex in zero-gravity will be even better than it is on planet
earth, investigating the potential for organising raves in space, and using
games of 3-sided football as essential training for Autonomous Astronauts.
The AAA is interested in the new possibilities that open up when we form
autonomous communities in space.

After the Second World War, organisations like NASA emerged to regulate and
control the developments in space exploration technology. Since the
collapse of the cold war myth, NASA has been struggling desperately for a
new identity. It no longer has the Soviet enemy to compete with, and must
dream up new excuses for itself. The AAA has consistently rejected the
rationale of government space programs which, dominated by the world-view
of engineers, regard the universe as a vast machine that can be manipulated
according to certain laws and principles. For example, we completely oppose
the idea of terraforming other planets. (Terraforming is the creation of a
potentially life-supporting atmosphere on a planet through the acceleration
of this process by an outside force. This may come in the form of exploding
nuclear weapons above the planet's surface or by causing a succession of
meteorites to hit the planet. A massive 'greenhouse' effect is created,
thus beginning the process that hopefully leads to an atmosphere capable of
supporting carbon-based life-forms - terraforming has been proposed for
Mars). The AAA understands that terraforming will be the action of a
capitalist system that, completely out of control, has exhausted the
earth's resources and requires another planet to devour.

The AAA has formed an approach to technology that is primarily concerned
with investigating how a specific technology is used and who gets to use
that technology. It is inevitable that the technology to build spaceships
will get cheaper, or even that new technologies will be developed that make
present-day rocket propulsion systems entirely redundant. The AAA is the
world's only space program that makes technological issues secondary to the
concern with what we will be doing when we form autonomous communities in
outer space. The AAA investigates conceptions of space exploration in which
the imagination is central. In doing so, Autonomous Astronauts create a
complex interactive project that anyone can participate in, and which
completely changes existing notions of space travel.

AAA groups develop specific strategies for engaging in the process of
social transformation that they have dared to dream of. One such strategy
for the redistribution of resources throughout society is an AAA inspired
competition for the first privately-funded group to have sex in space. The
XXX Prize Foundation, based in London, has announced that it intends to pay
£1 million to the first privately-funded team to launch a craft into
sub-orbital space - about 60 miles - and to then engage in sexual
intercourse whilst up there. This sexual act may take any form and involve
any number of people, but visual documentation must be provided to prove
that the sex did occur in a weightless environment. Meanwhile, other AAA
groups continue to point out how the process of creating autonomous
communities in space must go hand-in-hand with an identical process back on
planet earth. Wealth will then be re-defined in terms of the quality of
life within autonomous communities in space. Autonomous Astronauts are
making this future happen.

Not only is the AAA combating the government, military and corporate
monopoly of space travel, but Autonomous Astronauts are also fighting the
increasing number of private enterprise space exploration groups. The AAA
has revealed how these conquests of zero-gravity space will be a
continuation of the imperialist occupations of planet earth. The Catholic
Church has even discussed with NASA a plan for the conversion of aliens to
Christianity. But as the technology to go into space becomes cheaper, the
AAA will be concerned with how that technology is used. Plans to create a
space tourist industry confirm that the myth of the 'free market' will be
projected into space in a bid to further fabricate the fantasy of
capitalisms that are inescapable and omnipresent like the force of gravity.
The AAA opposes the 'wild west' pioneer metaphors put out by many of these
space age entrepreneurs by bringing to space travel a class dimension, and
demonstrating how economic austerity is manufactured by those who have a
vested interest in preventing the working class from building our own
spaceships.

The AAA does not intend to be interpreted as a metaphor for something else.
When we talk about building our own spaceships we really mean just that.
However, it does follow from this that what we have to say can have many
different and complex levels of meaning to it. For example, the myth of
space travel as the 'final frontier' is like that other myth about private
space enterprise in a universal 'free market'. These myths are designed to
mask the social forces that actually shape the present-day state, corporate
and military monopoly of space travel. The AAA opposes these myths with our
own specifically constructed and contradictory propaganda. These rhetorical
constructs are often put into orbit around the concept of space travel as
being inherently bound to human evolution. The AAA has declared that the
next stage in human evolution is to go into outer space.

But the AAA is not an utopian current for fin-de-siècle bargain hunters.
The AAA is interested in the new social relations that exist with the
creation of autonomous communities in space. This evolutionary process
continues the moment someone opens their mind to such possibilities.
According to our analysis, the AAA occupies a unique vantage point from
which a multitude of historical trajectories may be traced. And yet, as a
network of local, community-based groups who are not seeking to impose
their visions of space exploration on anyone else, it has become clear that
in outer space no-one will be concerned with the present-day organisation
of knowledge. That is, the compartmentalisation of knowledge into the
particular categories developed by capitalist culture over the last 500
years. The AAA network allows for a diversity of people to be involved,
bringing together different experiences and skills. Ideas collide and new
possibilities are made available.

A fundamental strategy developed by the AAA has been the ability to move in
several directions at once. The AAA's Intergalactic Conference will further
demonstrate this, and promises to be an intense two days of activity. The
conference will include: a public presentation of the AAA's aims and
objectives, with a debate on independent space exploration; screening of
AAA promotional videos; the opportunity to meet Autonomous Astronauts
informally; a SpaceBase established for the duration of the conference,
where AAA propaganda material will be on display; a rave in space dance
party with experimental electronic music; training day for Autonomous
Astronauts with game of 3-sided football. In addition to this, computer
terminals will be available for visiting an AAA web-site made by Viennese
children, and a spaceship with an interior designed and constructed by
children at the Vienna Kinder Museum will be installed. But the real
challenge for those that attend this conference will remain - how to build
our own spaceships and construct autonomous communities in outer space.

For more information on the Association of Autonomous Astronauts
Intergalactic Conference contact:

aaa@t0.or.at


Dreamtime Is Upon Us!

The AAA moves in several directions at once.


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