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Celibate Machine, 2024
Found objects, peristaltic pump, servo motors, laser etched steel.
Celibate Machine is a kinetic sculpture that operates within a closed self referential system. Water from the sculpture is periodically dropped onto a capacitive sensor which relays a signal back into its various motorized components mapping its speed to the sensor’s indeterminate changing capacitance.
The work is an embodiment of hyper modern celibacy practices like gooning, a prolonged, self-referential immersion in pornography and masturbation.
The Celibate Machine
Deleuze’s celibate machine represents a self-contained, self-generating system of desire that resists normative outcomes such as reproduction or relational intimacy. It symbolizes processes that are inherently productive yet detached from traditional structures, emphasizing autonomy and multiplicity over completion or resolution.
The Celibate Machine as a Model of Schizo Chaosmosis
When connected to schizo chaosmosis, the celibate machine provides a compelling metaphor for understanding the fragmented and generative nature of subjectivity. Schizo chaosmosis, as a theoretical framework, sees subjectivity as emerging from chaotic, pre-discursive flows, creating meaning and identity from the interplay of disparate systems.
Internal Production of Subjectivity
Like the celibate machine, schizo chaosmosis reconfigures traditional flows of desire into self-contained systems, resisting normative channels such as heterosexuality, reproduction, and conventional pleasure. Both frameworks highlight the productive potential of fragmentation and chaos.
Gooning as a Contemporary Manifestation
Gooning—a prolonged, self-referential immersion in pornography and masturbation—embodies the principles of the celibate machine and schizo chaosmosis. It functions as a desiring machine that transcends normative sexual frameworks, decoupling erotic desire from biological or relational goals. Through its chaotic and excessive nature, gooning highlights the fractured yet productive dimensions of modern sexual subjectivity.
The Gooner as Autopoietic
Feedback Loops of Desire: The gooner enters a self-perpetuating cycle of arousal, generating desire for its own sake. This feedback loop reflects the celibate machine’s principle of erotic autopoiesis, where pleasure is detached from external imperatives like reproduction or intimacy.
The Erotics of Schizo Chaosmosis
Gooning exemplifies the chaotic oscillation central to schizo chaosmosis, pushing subjectivity to its limits:
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Chaotic Subjectivity: The gooner dissolves boundaries between self and stimulus, entering a pathic intensity where immersion and dissociation coexist.
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Multiplicity of Identity: In the gooning state, subjectivity fragments. The gooner becomes both self and other, human and machinic, merging with the pornographic interface as an extension of their being.
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Erotics of Excess: Through sustained engagement with overstimulation, the gooner embodies the chaotic vertigo of schizo chaosmosis, transforming chaos into a ritualistic practice of self-production.
Hypermodern Celibacy and the Erotics of Chaos
Gooning represents a hypermodern evolution of the celibate machine. It critiques traditional sexual norms by fully immersing itself in the absurdity of excessive erotic production without resolution. By embracing unpredictability, gooning reveals the potential for new forms of erotic consistency and subjectivity within chaos.
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