CCRU - Recursed 2005–1995

CCRU (Cybernetic Culture Research Unit) hails from the Philosophy Department of Warwick University, UK, during the late 1990s. It was a rogue unit, blurring the borders between traditional scholarship, cyberpunk sci-fi, and music journalism. Its frenzied interdisciplinary activity, including the Virtual Futures and Viro technology conferences and the journal Abstract Culture, disturbed Warwick’s Philosophy Department, resulting in the termination of the unit. Drawing on a number of archival sources previously thought lost to the mistmares of time, this new assemblage of texts charts the nonlinear course of the ill-fated CCRU from its inception through subsequent "swarms" of the zine Abstract Culture and other publications. Including a wealth of previously unpublished material—dispatches from the frontlines of cyberculture; hyperstitional carrier lore; sinofuturism; junglism and rhythmatics; extensive additions to the Lemurian mythos; and numbo-jumberical resources. Members and affiliates of the CCRU includedStephen Metcalf, Iain Hamilton Grant, Ray Brassier, Reza Negarestani, Mark Fisher, Kodwo Eshun, Robin Mackay, Luciana Parisi, Matthew Fuller, Steve Goodman aka Kode9, Anna Greenspan; sound theorist Angus Carlyle; novelist Hari Kunzru; and artists Jake and Dinos Chapman, among others.