The Observatory Archives invites John Zerzan to reflect on this subject as a contribution to OVNI dis_Reality John Zerzan is an American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author. His works criticize agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocate drawing upon the ways of life of prehistoric hunter-gatherers as an inspiration for what a free society should look like. Some of his criticism has extended as far as challenging domestication, language, symbolic thought (such as mathematics and art) and the concept of time. His major books are Elements of Refusal (1988), Future Primitive and Other Essays (1994), Running on Emptiness (2002), Against Civilization: Readings and Reflections (2005) and Twilight of the Machines (2008).

The Observatory Archives invites Pablo Beneito to reflect on this subject as a contribution to OVNI dis_Reality Pablo Beneito has a PhD in Arabic philology from Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He was professor in the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Seville, and currently holds the same post at the University of Murcia. He has been a guest lecturer at École Practique des Hautes Études de la Sorbona, Kyoto University (Asafas), Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (Brazil) and the Toledo School of Translators (2002-2003). An Islamologist specialising in the study of Sufism, he has published first editions and and translations of Ibn Arabí: Las contemplaciones de los misterios, El secreto de los nombres de Dios, in Spanish and French, and The Seven Days of the Heart, in English.

The Observatory Archives invites Santiago López Petit to reflect on this subject as a contribution to OVNI dis_Reality. Santiago López Petit (Barcelona, 1950) was a militant in the workers autonomy movement during the seventies, and worked as a chemist for many years. He has participated in many of the resistance movements in the wake of the crisis of the Labour Movement. He is currently professor of Philosophy at the University of Barcelona, and participates in the Espai en Blanc foundation (www.espaienblanc.net). His books include Entre el Ser y el Poder. Una apuesta por el querer vivir (reissued Madrid 2009); Horror Vacui. La Travesía de la Noche del Siglo (Madrid, 1996), El infinito y la nada. El querer vivir como desafío (Barcelona, 2003), Amar y pensar. El odio del querer vivir (Barcelona, 2005) and La movilización global. Breve tratado para atacar la realidad (Madrid, 2009). He has also contributed to several collective books, and to magazines such as El Viejo Topo, Archipiélago, Riff Raff and Futur Antérieur. His books have been translated into several languages.

Something happened on the Spanish-Moroccan border in Autumn 2005. A thing that is still happening today in other places and in other ways. Hundreds of sub-Saharans used ladders to cross a European border. Weapons, rubber bullets, death. Thousands were deported to the Sahara desert. Death. Spanish television broadcast images of an accelerated war. Just bodies, not individuals. Something we watched. Returning to the place where it all happened we find nothing but empty space. A landscapes without traces. What remains, that fence. How is it possible to create new representations that don't get lost in the oversaturation of images that present migrants as victims? Others had already asked themselves the same question. A group of Congolese refugees is stuck in Morocco waiting to reach Europe. They have created a theatre piece based on their experiences of migration. In the room where they live each day, it takes shape as a self-representation of each step along the path. But it is not a finished work. There is no audience and no stage, just a work waiting for its ending.

The Grup de Recerca sobre Exclusió i Control Social (GRECS) and the Observatori de la Vida Quotidiana (OVQ), which are collaborating on the project “Strong Squares: the political beating of the heart of the city" present an intervention that takes participants on a documentary journey through the promised world of the information "freedom" that the Internet puts within our reach. In the tumultuous Arab social context of 2011, the Net emerged as one of most crucial tools for spreading information about the popular uprisings in different countries in the region. A year later, if we want to go back and follow the trail of those revolts, we simply type a keyword into a search engine and we are faced with millions of possibilities. But beyond this initial avalanche of data, what kind of information can we glean from this noisy, slippery magma? In this intervention we will explore how collective memory (and also forgetting) is shaped in a context such as this, through a search focusing on two uprisings that occurred almost simultaneously: the revolution in Cairo’s Tahrir Sqare, which received strong media coverage, and the citizen uprising in Tahrir Square, Baghdad, which was silenced in the press. By following this dual path, we will be able to experience the potential autonomy of the virtual world as a source of information independent of the mainstream media, and to consider the limitations of the Net as a scenario of and for social conflict. GRECS Research Group on Social Exclusion and Control. An interdisciplinary, international group of researchers that promotes critical reflection around the issues of social exclusion and control, based at the University of Barcelona. http://www.ub.edu/grecs/ OVQ: Observatory of Everyday Life. An assembly-based organisation of social researchers and visual arts professionals that carries out research on aspects of contemporary social life on the streets. http://www.ovq.cat