You can find Sueyeun Juliette Lee at silentbroadcast.com.
_______
WHAT ONE WANTS AND WHAT WILL BE PRESCRIBED
A CHAPBOOK
by Sueyeun Juliette Lee
with contributing author Nicholas DeBoer
That with music
loud and long
I would build that
dome in air,
That sunny dome!
those caves of ice!
And all who heard
should see them there,
And all should cry,
Beware! Beware!
–Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Khan”
The space of desire,
a destiny modulation
like a pinprick
appleblossom on a breeze
enforces a predilection for
what declines or is on the wane
((last aboriginal blooms of the sun-kissed kashmir
WELCOME TO MMORPGWORLD
The outside and in
now submerged into a tectonic relation–
what is seen and not, transmitted
or held closely in private, a dream
((where contraries and contradictions are disregarded
I can pay you to observe me in my throes.
Enter the sensorama, powered by
FutureYuan, trade commodity of virtuality in stereoscopic 3D!
“technology is so tethered to our lives
that it can leave a more specific and
lasting imprint of a human life
than history has ever allowed before”
the naked city
a constant “new babylon”
echo
gateway
dither
antiquity
zener waves
Qiu Chengwei stabbed Zhu Caoyuan in the chest
when he found out he had sold his virtual sword
<7,200 Yuan (£473)>
Memories from his detention at Jixi
re-education-through-labour camp in
Heilongjiang province still haunt Liu.
As well as backbreaking mining toil,
he carved chopsticks, toothpicks out of
planks of wood
assembled car seat covers
memorized communist literature to
pay off his debt to society.
By night, he was forced to slay demons,
battle goblins and cast spells
“we
kept playing until we could barely see things”
when novelty stands for value–
to refute, tally the things gathered
to preclude their circulation
paper flowers and their folds
memory of the wind whipping over the sea
a prisoner’s garment
noblesse of the rehabilitated mind
gulag as space for disciplined productivity
And the terms for the ordeal,
like speakeasies in the despotic corners of the
trigram omniverse–they unfold as
a negated banality in narration, its designs.
So many syntactic structures blown away by
continuously transforming global currencies–
from won, to bento, to dragoon to coral smear
((nearly £1.2bn of make-believe
roman a clef
a sense of absence
riven into time
prescient liminality love
the weight of fiber-optic silk
syncs our speech
Why is there such enmity between strangers?
The desert. How it magnifies–
heat as bondage
stark quality night
blind moon
(blight a towering hesitation the earth that is
(toward the ache, slip of
fingerbone left there
“The system accurately seizes on the weaknesses of human nature as it calls on gamers to give free reign to depravity in a virtual world that violates the norms of the real world. It gives to those that wage war the power of indiscriminate killing, and it bestows on killers the rewards of increased experience. And the system makes note of your decapitation record. That series of numbers is the height of glory, like an Indian warrior’s string of scalps, while all that the dead gain is disgrace.”
incomplete hand prints
cut frames the well
these our source codes
mull over the
translation ruins
You don’t have any security. Maybe you should take an escort.
The “pastoral region” once straddling the borderlands of the dissolved nations of Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia finally succumbed to the destructive cycles of flash flood and drought. Where countless generations had depended upon shepherding as the primary means for support, cattle no longer serve as the means to attain security, wealth, or power. As conditions worsened, the cattle raids grew more frequent and fierce–even as the number of cattle in the region diminished. In time, cattle was no longer a consideration: young men began to raid for glory, honor, and–most importantly–revenge.
*** may be PrimeDot’s most successful launch yet. The company seems to have completely rethought its strategy on how *** should look and feel, and the results are nothing if not striking. Instead of hewing to the curved, bezeled look, the company has turned the casing and face of *** into something decidedly more detailed and sophisticated. The materials feel good — premium — in your hands.
what is the mechanism of “free trade” by
which
a person is allowed to have a certain individuality
the mesh, loose
render a people
out of desire
an experiment of the self:
Though she has invested tens of
thousands of yuan in the game,
she has suffered defeat after defeat
due to the fact that others are
more willing to spend, and
to spend much more money than she.
shall i be savage when the banks
crumble in the dust of this world
made extravagance & strong
((The system loves war
museums of glass cases
covered
bicameral tension
coin silver/purple under eyelids
boil there
cum lit a gamma-ray pop in em
vox memo records a blank slide
projected face down huffing sand
out sides of my mouth
Notes:
This piece was originally composed as part of a collaborative project on aberrant futures, written with contributions from Nicholas DeBoer and constructed with Cara Benson, Rachel Levitsky, and Dana Teen Lomax. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to have worked with them.
All photos are by Nicholas DeBoer.
Because this text borrows extensively, with minimal edits, we would like to credit our sources.
Other source materials include:
Vincent, Danny. “China Used Prisoners in Lucrative Internet Gaming Work.” The Guardian May 25, 2011. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/china-prisoners-internet-gaming-scam>
Topolsky, Joshua. “iphone 4 review,” Endgadget June 22, 2010. <http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/22/iphone-4-review/>
“Chinese Gamer Sentenced to Life.” BBC News Online June 8, 1995. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4072704.stm>
Martinsen, Joel. “Gamble Your Life Away on ZT Online,” Danwei December 26, 2007. <http://www.danwei.org/electronic_games/gambling_your_life_away_in_zt.php>
Parenti, Christian. Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence. New York, NY: Nation Books, 2011.
Totilo, Stephen. “In The Virtual World, His Fiancee Never Died.“ Kotaku May 27, 2011. <http://kotaku.com/5806088/in-the-virtual-world-his-fiancee-never-died>