Join us at Cabinet Magazine HQ to celebrate the launch of Dominic Pettman's new book, Look at the Bunny: Totem, Taboo, Technology (Zero Books).
The panel (Pettman, Hugh Raffles, Masha Tupitsyn) will discuss their own totems, cultural taboos, and the various new and old technologies which enable them.
Are totems merely a thing of the distant past? Or might it be that our sleek new machines are producing totemic forces which we are only beginning to recognize? This book asks to what degree today's media technologies are haunted by a Freudian ghost, functioning as totems or taboos (or both). By isolating five case-studies (rabbits in popular culture, animated creatures that go "off-program," virtual lovers, jealous animal spirit guides, and electronic paradises), Look at the Bunny highlights and explores today's techno-totemic environment. In doing so, it explores how nonhuman avatars are increasingly expected to shepherd us beyond our land-locked identities, into a risky - sometimes ecstatic - relationship with the Other.
Wed, May 8
Cabinet Magazine
300 Nevins St.
Brooklyn, NY
7 pm
Facebook RSVP here