Irational.org’s Traum

Irational.org’s Traum a Psychoarchaeologist’s Dramaturgy

By V.M.

Series editors: Clemens Apprich, Josephine Berry Slater, Anthony Iles & Oliver Lerone Schultz

Published in association with Post-Media Lab Books

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(2014. ISBN 978-1-906496-98-2; eBook ISBN 978-1-906496-78-4)

This book is a psychoarchaeological reconstruction of an art collective, irational.org, who existed in the times of the internet. The material reconstituted here was derived, after irational.org’s disappearance, from multiple requests for data from their archived art server. These requests, made by post, were submitted by the author, V.M., to an unidentified and unreliable Data Auditor, using a Secure Access Protocol. It is rumoured that access to the archive was securitised by irational.org because it contains highly sensitive, possibly incriminating, data. The psychoarchaeologist’s reconstruction reveals a cultural organisation that satirised, resisted and internalised the libertarian yet bureaucratic tendencies of a surveillance society, and its obsession with data privacy, security and property. The trail runs cold as the group made its retreat into the woods from a world that was disintegrating.

Part of the PML Books series. A collaboration between Mute and the Post-Media Lab