Ushering in a Third Age of Becoming: Editor's Letter
In that letter, I outlined our concept of traces, which was themed around a Deleuzo-Lucretian lore, where we wanted to frame Becoming as a machine that produced tracings, glancing snapshots of spectres. We wanted to imagine Becoming as a simple handmade contraption, with which we could Xerox the infinite. Becoming, as in the philosophical concept pertaining to Nietzsche, Deleuze and so on, is the (Baudrillardian) "Secret" that lies beyond Being: “Becoming collapses into being like a piece of light, suddenly shy when observed” (Rasheeda Philips). A Trace or a Tracing is a particle, that gestures at a field, and the infinite computation of the fields is Becoming. Traces, as affects, fall out of fields like the perfected Apple falls from the Apple Tree — dead, but containing the seeds of new life.
Before this, the fields were the categories (“Capital Hates Everyone”, “L’audiovision”, “Schizopolitics”, “Hyperreal Image Control”, “Chthulucene”, “Diogenes”, “Zeroes + Ones” & “Quantum Thought Image”), but that was the problem entirely; the fields were just glorified hashtags or shelves. Even if we wanted to imagine a shelf that would spit out books, rather than one that you would store books on, functionally, they were just categories, or worse: décor. I say this because their functionality became obsolete as soon as we launched them. If you can remember, we presented these fields, 18-months ago, with a series of 8 videos, one for each field. Immediately after this, people started submitting film and video, and so we immediately had to make-up a field/category for these works, and so we tacked on "The Audiovisual Field" at the very last second, which obviously seemed to contradict the field “L’audiovision”. It was too late to dial back everything else, and so we just let it run—to play with the hand we had been dealt, as if an unforeseen character-building error—but we have been waiting patiently for a moment to come where we had time and resources to make sense of these contradictions and to smooth them out.
On top of this, we had a defunct record label sitting behind the scenes that we were hoping to either re-animate, or to salvage for parts in order to build a new music-oriented domain. Becoming had, after all, started as a music project back in Cyprus (a fanzine and record label for the local rave scene, with a radio show and some published essays). Becoming was a late addition to that project, but it simply outgrew its host and it became independent. The first Age of Becoming was Becoming Magazine, then it transformed into https://becoming.press for the second. We knew that there had to be a way of integrating the films and the music into the field system in a more convincing way.
Finally, and most importantly, something else that contributed to this gradual shift was that the master signifiers of Becoming, the theoretical ground, the editorial line, whatever you want to call it, had been swerving since the moment we opened. Becoming had been founded upon the three principles of “Queer Cynicism”, “Quantum Sociology”, and “Non-”, and in many senses these principles were challenged by our first book—not discarded, but surpassed—and there were new master signs emerging. Becoming was changing, people were changing it, and we wanted to let that unfold by itself rather than impose a set of marketing terms.
This story, of the second age of Becoming, was retold at length in the book Affects & Dreams, so instead of retelling that story anymore here, I can proceed to the period after the book ends. So, after much consideration, as a way of making sense of what has become of Becoming, we are proposing the following changes:
Becoming is a Machine. The Becoming-Machine is made up of five smaller machines called fields. The three (currently) fields are as follows: (1) Eternal/Return, (2) *COMING SOON*, (3) SWERVE.
- Eternal/Return is the field for Sound, Audio, Music, Transmissions, as well as writing and reflections on sound—it is at once a magazine, a recording label, and a radio channel. The field is named after Nietzsche’s concept of the Eternal Return, that which is beyond Good/Evil. It has been said that music, with its ceaseless flows of differentiation, best approximates the Eternal Return. Eternal/Return becomes êt/re—Being—which finds its way back to Becoming through sounding.
- *COMING SOON* is the field for Audiovisual, Motion and Images, as well as writing and reflections on film, and reviews. For now, this machine produces tracings relevant to these topics, emitting and archiving them. The field is named after the character from Antiquity, a Titan who was wielded by Gaia in the great revolution against heaven, the son who kills the father. It is no secret that Deleuze holds a position of popularity within the film world, in the sense that his ideas about Images and Time are widely known in the industry, and so *COMING SOON*, χ, as an image of Time, finds its way back to Becoming through movement. For now, *COMING SOON* will consist of the video art and films we are currently hosting, as well as the articles and text about film, tv, and imagery. We will begin by embedding our archive from Vimeo to a new website, along with the relevant texts. We have more films scheduled for release, but while we work through building the infrastructure and releasing those films, you can still reach out to us with any video or text submissions.
- SWERVE hasn’t happened yet, though it is perhaps the most familiar. This field is the domain of the Other, of Baudrillard’s Secret, of Diogenes’ rebuke, of Chthulucenic composts and Anti-Capitalist polemics. When separating out the materials that would move to êt/re and *COMING SOON*, there remained a body of works, around 40% of Becoming’s publications: the other traces, the ones that couldn’t be specified by the other machines. Yet, the remainder wasn’t so random after all, it brought together the four fields of Schizopolitics, Capital Hates Everyone, Chthulucene, and Diogenes; which if you think about it, represents the original editorial line of Becoming. Isn’t it strange? If you separate out the print materials, the label, and the audiovisual club, we end up right back where we were two years ago, with an online magazine for Queer Cynicism, Quantum Sociology and Non-. SWERVE, as Secrecy, returns to Becoming through negation.
Eternal/Return is already up and running, and *COMING SOON* taking shape as we speak. SWERVE may need a little more time, but we want to open this project properly with an open call in the coming days, so that we can open this project with new material and a new life.
The second issue of our untitled magazine is almost ready for production — we can’t wait to show you what has been happening with this, we’ve pulled off some really promising collaborations, with Female Wizard, Charles Mudede (yes, really), Ibrahim Alfa Jnr and more. The last time we made an issue of this magazine, Issue One, it was a split-second before the last big transition, and once again, by some grand coincidence, Issue Two is set to drop moments before we transition again. After Issue Two, we will take a short break for the end of summer, and we plan to re-inaugurate this new age of Becoming in October, at Miss Read 2024.