why jungle?
a work in progress by /rupture and splice

The jungle is alive.
The jungle is a complex system. The density of life in the tropical rainforest, the speed with which organisms spring up, spread, mature, and die, the ecological cycle, is so rapid that thick layers of fertile soil become established in the brief time between rainfalls, even on the horizontal surfaces of upper tree branches. Life in the jungle is able to move quickly-- even sedentary forms like plants and fungi have developed in the ability to spread seed or spore in all directions at every opportunity. Molds, fungi, bacteria that thrive and flourish on the decay of plant and animal matter//

We find our situation to resemble the above.
Urban (or rural!) spaces provide us with a similar density of planes on which to engage in the activity of (sound/image/meme) reproduction at every opportunity...constantly searching for soil in which new life forms may grow.

We like fungi utilize materials discarded from the shuddering body of late capitalism in order to build structures which will house, protect, and make possible the continued spread of our mimetic 'genes.' What are those, specifically? Variations on the themes fo class, race, and gender consciousness; nomadism; technorganicity, media disinformation and subversion; breaks in the flow; recombinant existence; fevered dreams of chanting down babylon on more time...

Existing on the city's edge, where aging industry crumbles against working class white homes in a slow-moving swirl of racial intolerance, we are constantly reminded that "any sound can be you" is untrue. Neighborhood kids frequently hurl cruel-edged words at us, taught to twist difference into fear. The sounds we make in response fortell a future more fluid, with fewer genres of classification and containment. Color outside of the lines.

Abandoned TV's and computers become our lamps and speaker stands and sculptural building blocks. We pull intact bags of video and audio cassettes from the trash for renewal in densely layered image and sound mixes; a roll of canvas from the streets of Chinatown is cut up and stapled into our space and becomes our walls (our walls are translucent, waterstained with a sinewave pattern, thin enough to hear small noises from the industrial machinery just outside). To be truthful, the we writing this are elsewhere already, collaboration on opposite ends of the continent. We conquer our diasporic disprsal by sending data down telephone lines on stolen time...

We move between the multilayerd canopies of different media, different social spaces and scenes. We inject junk into the veins of sub/cultural separatism, but we are not junkies: we avoid overreliance on any one drug, strategy, or tactic, and constantly search for new ways to disturb the smoothly narcotic surface of corporate ideological domination...

The Jungle is disappearing. We agree that the jungles (all of them) should be saved; They are full of many tools-known and unkown-that have enormous healing potential. From the subterranean roots to the airy canopies, jungles are pluralistic, interdependent, and chaotic, and for these reasons new ones must be fostered. The jungle is not afraid of gaps, breaks, or small paths hacked through because it will soon regenerate, patch up, and mend itself with fresh growth.
Witness the riot of life, its rhythms irrepressible.

Tones burst, the air is charged, and in the undergrowth fellow creatures are poised to spring.

Jungles are full of sound...noise...communications...

-excerpted from the Jungle Operations Manual by splice & /rupture