<nettime> On the closure of Autistici/Inventati

[Patrice Riemens via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Dear Nettimers,

Tomorrow I will start my journey back home and hence stop, or in any case pause, my 'text filtering' of follow ups about A/I's demise. Here for some of my thoughts about it 

Cheers to All,
p+2D!

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‘Anéanti(s)’ , the French superlative for ‘destroyed’ is, in the context I'd like to use it, nearly untranslatable. 'Annihilated’ comes close, despite a French word (annihilé’) also existing. To me, ‘anéantis’ is how the people at Autistici/Inventati must feel, after their, make no mistake, incredibly courageous decision to close shop seeing it attacked by the most powerful, and by now, most monstrous power in the Western world. 

Even though the phenomenon is recurrent and recognisable, rarely have I felt the (in)famous ‘Niemöller statement’ (‘first they came for …’) to be more relevant. 

Yet the A/I collective’s decision can also be viewed as a slap in the face of the Trumpian regime. Like “We shall not play your stupid game”. And with A/I no more, we can hope genuinely new initiatives will see the light, driven by the youngsters of today - the same spirited youngsters the A/I people were 25 years ago. They surely will fill the gap A/I is leaving. 

Meanwhile, we can only hope and wish for the current A/I people not to fall into a mental black hole. Fortunately, most if not all of them have, in the past 25 years, also built a ‘normal life’: marriages, kids, cars, and a professional life aside with but outside of activism. 

May these, and possibly other life purposes be guardrails against the unavoidable low spirits that must now be assailing them. 

All the same, to me and many of us, the 6th of September 2026 will remain a Black Letter Day, the umpteenth portender of the end of the world as we knew it.

Dordrecht, 9 September 2026


PS: A net-savvy friend of mine, after reading about what happened to A/I,  has completely reconfigured their rather extensive net presence so as to be, as much possible, secured against direct or indirect attacks by the  Trump regime. It took them long hours over days of hard work. May this serve as a dire warning, and a strong advice to do the same.

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