The Three Circulations: Active Substance

Framed in the biennial project STIMULANTS: CIRCULATION AND EUPHORIA, the seminar titled The three Circulations is an encounter to analyse three planes or dimensions of circulation set around the “active substances”. With this term we refer to things such as narcotics, antibiotics, spices and other stimulants that afford a certain alteration of the physiological order for specific purposes. Although the routes outlined by the “active ingredients” are heterogeneous and virtually infinite, it is possible to place them under three specific dimensions which, in turn, structure and affect all activity and life on the planet: the circulation in the human body; the global movement of goods; and that which, exceeding the earthly dimension, we refer to as cosmic circulation. From the contributions by various guest professionals from the worlds of art, philosophy and political economy, the seminar investigates the ever-complex links established between consciousness and reality in the context of these movements.

The seminar explores these “active substances” as “technologies”, extensions of the human body that determine the subjective constitution of individuals and groups. Techniques that put us in a network with other elements (humans, plants, animals, minerals...) and which gives particular relevance to the correspondences between desire and reason, drunkenness and capitalism, subjectivity and cosmovision. A few of the exchanges between the subject and its “externality” that will be analysed based on the following:

1. Organic circulation: the study of the uses and operations that refer to the care and regulations the individual performs in his/her own body (medication, therapies, exercise...). “Active substances” as “technologies of the self”, i.e. those that enable analysis of “the relationship with oneself.”

2. Economic circulation: in the same way that the uses made of the steam engine or electricity are technological advances that determine specific social and economic contexts, it is possible to link different types of stimulants with specific historical stages. The participation of these substances in the establishment of a global economy, with its chains of production, demand and distribution, as well as the exploitation of natural resources and productive forces in a world shaped from the idea of system.

3. Cosmic circulation: the study of the relations between transcendent movements and immanence, between what is stable and what is unstable, between balances and imbalances. Managing all that escapes quantity and certainties.

In the other hand this encounter is a introduction for an exhibition programmed for 2017 in Tabakalera with the same name and some of the artist that will be part of it are summoned to be part of the seminar.

Participants: Lorea Alfaro, Ibon Aranberri, John Barker, Erick Beltrán, Alice Creischer, Ines Doujak, Antonio Escohotado, Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz, Pablo Lafuente, Jorge Hurtado and Fernando Palma. 

Programme: 

29 September 2016, Thursday

19:00 Presentation: Oier Etxeberria, Pablo Lafuente.

19.30 Talk: Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz. “One, two, three... circulations” 

30 September 2016, Friday

17:00-19:00. Talk: Jorge Hurtado. "La leyenda de la coca"

19:30 Talk-performance: Ines Doujak / John Barker

1 October 2016, Saturday

11,30-13:30 Art interventions: Lorea Alfaro, Erik Beltrán, Ibon Aranberri eta Fernando Palma. Roundtable

14:00 Conclusions of the roundtable.

17:00 Talk: Antonio Escohotado. “Freedom and security”