I am Benjamin Ross Nicholson (BRN) and I am attempting to qualify. After I qualify, I will be granted the title of "PhD Candidate" and will be permitted to pursue my dissertation at the University of Southern California in the Media Arts + Practice program.

I make my attempt under favorable conditions; the faculty are kind, supportive, good-faith-fellows (though not uncritical). I make my attempt within an institution that was designed with my white, male, straight, able-bodied career as its normative model; my attempt meets me where I am, as I am (so it would seem). I make my attempt from the comfort of my new home in Boulder, CO:

Here, I am warm and well-fed.

Yet I am attempting to qualify under authority. This authority reckons my qualifying as a matter of ascension, of 'moving upward'. To qualify is to assert my vertical position amongst people. More critically, to participate in qualification is to implicitly reinforce a hierarchy of permitted behaviors: I am qualified, therefore I may x; I am not qualified therefore I may not y. With each qualification, I am taught to imagine that I climb closer to some transcendent plane of power (or the PowerPlane, as you will encounter in the writings to come) and away from those upon whom my power, my authority, may be exercised.

In brief, my qualifying is intended to consummate a division, to generate subordination, to cast someone under and away from me.

This is a lonely and cruel manner of being.

And because I desire friendship and affection I am now exhausted by my participation in authority - I would like to dissolve it in affinity, the organizing of our social existence through an ongoing and conscientious consideration of our relationships to one another (and, particularly, how they change).

Instead of the efficiency of titles and the roles they confer, instead of 'going through the motions' to meet my quota of prescribed activity, I would like to be unmarked, to experience the uncertainty of recognizing what curiosities may be called for on a given day (by the material beings around me) and how I might meet them.

Rather than accumulating property and guarding my hoard, I would join in an economy of sharing where value rests in the affect generated by what circulates between us instead of in competitive advantage.

In lieu of authoring monumental works in my name, I would gather with loved ones to arrange intense and temporary forms, like when a band plays a song for the first and last time.

Affinity is an enemy to authority because it suggests that we can be without fixing disparities in place. With affinity, I might lead one moment and follow the next; this cannot be decided before a situation is recognized; this is a fraught and contingent negotiation. Affinity is bad for profits but allows for the possibility of pleasure that is not at the cost of another's suffering.

For the moment, affinity writhes and transmutes beneath authority, often under ambient duress or direct threat. Perhaps, while out of sight of authority's covetous upward gaze, we can sneak out the side door of the fulfillment facility and into the woods, where things are more provisional and emergent, less predictable but more capacious. Instead of gliding through aisles of boxed commodities in suffocating heat, we might laugh (or cry) as we get tangled up in gnarled branches that could not have anticipated our passing. Perhaps, on the outside, we might encounter and become otherwise.

Therefore, BRN: The Qualifying will be initiated with the following notions in mind:

1. We have ceded much of our 'public' to public corporations so there are few places where we may easily gather; I have decided to inject my desire for affinity into Google and its suite of Docs Editors in the hopes that my Qualifying will be readily available to those I cherish, as well as those I've yet to encounter, and that, in some way, the content therein will bring rust to the robots that harvest the metadata of our metadata to use against us.

2. During the composition process, I am abandoning my authority over the publishing of my essays; editing permissions are available to any and every internet user with a Google account while I am writing (I trust you, my friends, to make appropriate interventions and to do me no harm); commenting will remain possible after the conclusions of each writing session.

3. While there will be copious citation in my forthcoming writing, I promise to only cite the works of others for reasons of affinity and common enthusiasm/antagonism, not to establish myself as an authority and jealous possessor of proprietary knowledge. If I err, please forgive me.

4. The words you are reading now were overly-prepared; in the writing to come, I will allow myself to communicate emergently and with affection for literature; I will approximate an academic register where appropriate (and, sometimes, where inappropriate if it helps us).

5. In addition to writing, you will discover a variety of other media forms that may permit a more generous sharing of my thought stream; I will do my best to make things easy on you.

And now, you may proceed to witness my exchanges with the esteemed and assembled faculty committee (via the Qualifying Questions) concerning capitalism, death, and performance.

If you are the curious sort and have made it this far, then I would like to consider you a friend, nascent or habitual. Should you wish to leave a trace of your time here, I invite you to sign the guestbook (be careful for it is fragile).

Hyperlink to BRN: The Qualifying Guestbook

While you decay, why not enjoy some music?

Hyperlink to complimentary entertainment

For the benefit of the esteemed and assembled faculty committee, you may find below a brief record of my recent performative efforts:

Hyperlink to BRN: The Qualifying: The Portfolio