~ ~ ~ CYBORG TAROT ~ ~ ~

The Cyborg Tarot is a collection of contemporary survival tactics composed by NYXXX. The deck can be used to explore questions of resistance and compliance in everyday life. Each card offers a possible way of resisting or complying. Each card offers the possibility to reimagine the world in which we resist or comply. Each card offers you a possibility to observe, reinvent and transgress what you would normally do.

The cards do not separate the political from the personal, because we don’t think it is possible to talk about a system (whether in crisis or in mint condition) without recognizing that we are part of it ourselves. We cannot critically talk about our bodies without recognizing the technologies that extend it. We are cyborgs; ironic, honest and multiple. Donna Haraway:

«To be One is to be autonomous, to be powerful, to be God; but to be One is to be an illusion, and so to be involved in a dialectic of apocalypse with the other. Yet to be other is to be multiple, without clear boundary, frayed, insubstantial. One is too few, but two are too many. »

We are all cards in a seemingly never ending deck, jokers and players simultaneously. So we made a deck to describe the tactics that are at hand. You can use this deck for tarot readings, different kinds of roleplay, starting conversations or something else you find useful. There is no right or wrong interpretations of the cards; follow your associations.

Bodies / Crisis / Tactics

This is a proposal on how to make a conversational meditation, using the cards.

Someone is a reader. One or more people are being read. The reader lets the people being read cut the deck before starting. The reader then opens three cards, one at a time. The three cards represent three concepts.

The first card represents a cyborg body: a body that is defined by its dependence on networks and functions that are not merely biological. Examples of cyborg bodies are those using glasses to see, those using credit cards to function in everyday lives, or those using online networks to know what is going on. As the first card is opened, the reader tells something about the card, and then asks the one(s) being read in what way they can relate this specific card to a cyborg body (personal or other).

The second card represents a crisis relating to the cyborg body or its context. Examples of crises could be situations when different aspects of the cyborg body are not cooperating, when there are conflicts of interests in the context surrounding the cyborg body, or when the cyborg body has an urge to do things that it is not capable of doing in its present form.

The third card represents a tactic in relation to the crisis; a way to cope with or solve the crisis. It does not have to be a good solution – it can also be just a way to deal with the situation. Examples of tactics could be to push down the part of the cyborg that is not cooperating, or to find ways of addressing the conflicting interests, or to develop into a new cyborg form, or something entirely different.