Vuvuzuela V

Donna Cato, Cornucopia

Plenty of horns, worm of plenty.

Parasite means eating next to. In French, the term has three meanings: biological parasite, social parasite, and -- what renders it its theoretical pregnancy -- noise (static, interference).

Noise is not a passing stage between signals, noise is relation, noise is becoming, noise is productive. Without the intermediate stage of noise, relation would be immediate, and therefore no relation.

Vuvuzuela is not an utopia, but a cornucopia.

Vuvuzuela IV

The one tone the vuvuzela is capable of bringing forth is B♭ (pronounced 'bess' in Swedish). Most of the games in the world cup offered a wall of sound - a cacophony not unlike the biblical swarm of grasshoppers. Some games later the Vuvuzuelan intensity had formed itself, and a rhythm, albeit mono-tonal, was discernible. Making the language of supporters stuttering.

The use of vuvuzelas is a profoundly minor practice - it doesn't disrupt the game like the occasional streaker, or like balloons and other nonhuman actors. Instead it heats up, excites, and changes the game without breaking the rules. Sonorously smoothing out game-space; making it a pitch of intensity. Judges will make bad decisions, players will not be able to communicate verbally.

Vuvuzuelans are parasites in the etymological sense of the word, 'the ones eating next to', something Michel Serres makes us aware of. Surprisingly invisible in the live coverage of the audience (funny hats, face-paintings, and beautiful women is the perennial top-three on the producers' lists), but still painfully present, the Vuvuzuelan people much resemble itchy and scratchy worms in the rectal realm.

The rationale of the Vuvuzuelan side is not to choose sides in the all too crude dialectics of soccer. The Vuvuzuelan people is not interested in winners, losers, and other main players in the dramaturgy of history-making. Vuvuzuela reacts on intensity, or, in lack of it, creates intensity. The Vuvuzuelan parliament, wherein its tawdry micropolitics are acted out, is like a choir in an antique drama: bacchanal, emotional, and with the memory of a goldfish.

For crying out loud: May the Bbt man win!

Vuvuzuela III

Is tomorrow the last day of the Vuvuzuelan community? Will the 11th of July be remembered (and squandered) like a Deleuzian event? I hear London locked the doors for Vuvuzuela to the Olympic Games... On the other hand it's been told that they handed out them horns to Minor League players in the US. I guess that you really can feel alright when you hear that music ring... Hit it Mark:

And now you step inside but you don't see too many faces
Comin' in out of the rain you hear the jazz go down
Too much Competition, too many other places
but not too many horns can make that sound
Way on downsouth, way on downsouth London town

Vuvuzuela II

In soccer, the attending group of supporters of a team is proverbially referred to as the twelfth player. However, the vuvuzela puts an end to that.

In few of the games of 2010 WC in South Africa, the usual noise of the audience could be heard. The famous Samba rhythms of the Brazilian supporters, for instance, totally drowned in the Vuvuzuelan clamor.

The shots of the Vuvuzuelan people, displayed on TV during the games, showed Vuvuzelas with colour-combinations from all of the participating countries. But the noise was a collective effort.

One Vuvuzuelan exclaimed that he was starkly against the prohibition of his noble instrument during games, it was his way of affecting the game.

So let it be known: The 12th players are dead, long live the 23rd player, and long live the n-1!

Vuvuzuela I

Have you ever been called home by the clear ringing of silver trumpets?
- Boromir to Aragorn

They say that the spell will be broken on sunday, a European country will win the world cup despite the fact that the championship is arranged outside of Europe. But will it really?

In a very technical sense, a European country will without doubt win, whether it is the Netherlands or Spain. But in the present line of argument it is argued that the victor will not be European, nor will the winner be from any of the other continents.

No country in the world, no judge, no remote audience can resist the parasitic noise of the vuvuzela. The vuvuzela is the sound of what Sean Smith, by way of Hardt and Negri, refers to as the sporting multitude. Therefore, let it be known that the constant Other in the field of sports, the audience, finally wields a power mighty enough to affect the game globally.

A global multitudinal citizenry was declared that fine day in June of 2010, that fine day when the country of Vuvuzuela was born.

Finally the royal prerogative of Minas Tirith is denounced, finally Boromir can claim the throne of Echtelion, not as a steward, but as a king.

The mass-production of losers II

"Perhaps no other period in history has seen so many losers and so few winners as our own. And time, because it advances through the exacerbated competitions and mimeticism (in science and elsewhere), produces and multiplies exponentially the great crowd of losers – of which everyone risks becoming a member, overnight – and shrinks the more and more rarified and exclusive club (I almost said “pantheon”) of winners.

- Michel Serres to Bruno Latour (1995). Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time, p. 185.

The mass-production of losers

Victorious

Victorious

We could be victorious

Once again victorious

One last time victorious

Never again victorious

- Victorious, The Perishers

According to the Norwegian sport sociologist Jan-Ove Tangen, the symbolically generalized medium, i.e. the core rationale of a social system (according to Niklas Luhmann), in sport, is (the inauguration of) the victor. Everything in a sports event boils down to this. The not yet known, although anticipated, winner in an athletic contest is the pivot around which the sport event unfolds.

But, to quote ‘the boss’, what about ‘the wrong side of that line’, what about the losers? On the

dark side of the moon losers regroup in ever increasing numbers. The loser isn’t even correctly named: how could one lose what one never had? Sport as a social system might be mediated through the victor, but the lion’s share of what is produced in it is that vast amount of losers. Sport is nothing other than a mass-production of losers.

A worthy mission, for sure, would be to aestheticize losing, to press away the poison and to extract the honey. One of the first things that appears as urgent is ruling out the element of shame that's connected to loss.