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Templexity: Disordered Loops through Shanghai Time
Time-travel made complex.
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
48 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 5, 2014
22 people are currently reading
315 people want to read
About the author
Nick Land
46 books755 followersLand was a lecturer in Continental Philosophy at the University of Warwick from 1987 until his resignation in 1998.
At Warwick, he and Sadie Plant co-founded the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), an interdisciplinary research group described by philosopher Graham Harman as "a diverse group of thinkers who experimented in conceptual production by welding together a wide variety of sources: futurism, technoscience, philosophy, mysticism, numerology, complexity theory, and science fiction, among others".
During his time at Warwick, Land participated in Virtual Futures, a series of cyber-culture conferences. Virtual Futures 96 was advertised as “an anti-disciplinary event” and “a conference in the post-humanities”. One session involved Nick Land “lying on the ground, croaking into a mic”, recalls Robin Mackay, while Mackay played jungle records in the background."
In 1992, he published The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism. Land published an abundance of shorter texts, many in the 1990s during his time with the CCRU. The majority of these articles were compiled in the retrospective collection Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007, published in 2011.
Land taught at the New Centre for Research & Practice until March 2017,
One of Land's celebrated concepts is "hyperstition," a portmanteau of "superstition" and "hyper" that describes the action of successful ideas in the arena of culture. Hyperstitions are ideas that, once "downloaded" into the cultural mainframe, engender apocalyptic positive feedback cycles. Hyperstitions – by their very existence as ideas – function causally to bring about their own reality. Nick Land describes hyperstition as "the experimental (techno-)science of self-fulfilling prophecies".
At Warwick, he and Sadie Plant co-founded the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), an interdisciplinary research group described by philosopher Graham Harman as "a diverse group of thinkers who experimented in conceptual production by welding together a wide variety of sources: futurism, technoscience, philosophy, mysticism, numerology, complexity theory, and science fiction, among others".
During his time at Warwick, Land participated in Virtual Futures, a series of cyber-culture conferences. Virtual Futures 96 was advertised as “an anti-disciplinary event” and “a conference in the post-humanities”. One session involved Nick Land “lying on the ground, croaking into a mic”, recalls Robin Mackay, while Mackay played jungle records in the background."
In 1992, he published The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism. Land published an abundance of shorter texts, many in the 1990s during his time with the CCRU. The majority of these articles were compiled in the retrospective collection Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007, published in 2011.
Land taught at the New Centre for Research & Practice until March 2017,
One of Land's celebrated concepts is "hyperstition," a portmanteau of "superstition" and "hyper" that describes the action of successful ideas in the arena of culture. Hyperstitions are ideas that, once "downloaded" into the cultural mainframe, engender apocalyptic positive feedback cycles. Hyperstitions – by their very existence as ideas – function causally to bring about their own reality. Nick Land describes hyperstition as "the experimental (techno-)science of self-fulfilling prophecies".
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 18, 2022
This is a frustating book to read. Its message is closed in by a frustratingly opaque style which requires genuine effort to cut through. The problem is that once the reader does cut through this style, there is little fruit to be found under its surface.
Theoretically, this book is a sustained analysis of the 2012 film Looper. Land finds in this film a microcosm of his rather strange views on time travel, which meander throughout the book, but never seem to coalesce into anything meaningful, let alone reach a conclusion.
It also features an analysis of the architecture of the city of Shanghai, which Land appears to see as closely linked to the movie Looper. He divides the architecture of Shanghai into four 'stratum', and through these layers sees a kind of vague non-literal 'time travel' at work.
The problem is that his arguments are generally irrelevant to our society (I have no idea why he ever thought to write an in-depth examination of the movie Looper), or else are based on totally barmy ideas about how the world works (time travel does not actually exist in any ordinary scientific understanding). And the whole book is couched in the most frustrating language, which does - I concede - sound clever, but ultimately hides very little of substance. The following extract fairly accurately sums up the style of writing.
As we know, what spoke of modernity - to the point of radical identification, usurpation, or near-total absorption of the historical impulse self-apprehended as modernist – was the ‘International Style’, defined by an uncompromising logic of functional and geometrical idealization. By projecting an elimination of all discernible geo-historical or cultural reference from the urban landscape, such ‘modernist’ designs aspired to the universality of a negative cosmopolitanism, liberated from the entrapments of peculiarity. Abstraction was to be attained through monumental anti-constructions, the world’s first absolute edifices, unfixed from the coordinates of space, time, and tribe, and thus supporting – whether by incidental necessity or strategic design – a discourse of intrinsic global authority, combining the most exhaustive programmatic practicality with the loftiest theoretical purity. Through the International Style social structures of all kinds, spearheaded by exemplary public buildings, were to find their consummate reconciliation with the universally communicable Idea.
I should say, my issue with this book isn't the style - although I do not like it, I am happy to put up with it - my issue is that the premises it works from are wrong, as are the conclusions. On the surface of it, the above paragraph is reasonable, but it begins to fall apart as soon as it is examined closely. The idea that this 'International Style' is divorced of time and place is simply not true, and at best shows a lack of understanding of the architectural style that the author is trying to discuss. At worst, it is disingenous. Additionally, what follows from this bold, unsubstantiated and untrue claim, is a vague appeal to paranoia. This book in general exploits a vague sense of unease that it seems to presume to be present in the reader. It repeatedly conjures up loosely-defined references to international unknowns - global conceptual entities which may or may not exist outside of time. Although this may be somewhat interesting from an artistic perspective, it is not a suitable crux upon which to build an argument in a book of what is ostensibly non-fiction.
By way of a conclusion, I would like to include an extract from a five star review of this book that I read on Amazon, posted by a user under the name of 'Tiron Stefan'. It is impenetrable, but quite accurately sums up how I imagine a hardcore fan of this book to speak about it. I really don't think there is much meaning in their jargon.
There is much more to time machines than nostalgic chrono-tourism, head scratching time paradoxes or contradicting the laws of thermodynamics. Experiments upholding or questioning the ultimate threshold of light speed have already surpassed the experiment, spilling over into flash trading latency time. The idea of tachyonic retro-betting back in time is already at work, spewing theoretical papers & financial results - remaking the real & imploding the present. Templexity unleashes self-assembling cyclotronic convergent waves out of every missed recurrence: every modernity novelty revival, literary escapism, theme park role-playing, operative revisionism, Art Deco retro-futures, each amplifies the echo of ekoumenopolis as urban singularity, each reinforced negative or positive cybernetic feedbacks into self-assembling negentropic conglomerates.
Theoretically, this book is a sustained analysis of the 2012 film Looper. Land finds in this film a microcosm of his rather strange views on time travel, which meander throughout the book, but never seem to coalesce into anything meaningful, let alone reach a conclusion.
It also features an analysis of the architecture of the city of Shanghai, which Land appears to see as closely linked to the movie Looper. He divides the architecture of Shanghai into four 'stratum', and through these layers sees a kind of vague non-literal 'time travel' at work.
The problem is that his arguments are generally irrelevant to our society (I have no idea why he ever thought to write an in-depth examination of the movie Looper), or else are based on totally barmy ideas about how the world works (time travel does not actually exist in any ordinary scientific understanding). And the whole book is couched in the most frustrating language, which does - I concede - sound clever, but ultimately hides very little of substance. The following extract fairly accurately sums up the style of writing.
As we know, what spoke of modernity - to the point of radical identification, usurpation, or near-total absorption of the historical impulse self-apprehended as modernist – was the ‘International Style’, defined by an uncompromising logic of functional and geometrical idealization. By projecting an elimination of all discernible geo-historical or cultural reference from the urban landscape, such ‘modernist’ designs aspired to the universality of a negative cosmopolitanism, liberated from the entrapments of peculiarity. Abstraction was to be attained through monumental anti-constructions, the world’s first absolute edifices, unfixed from the coordinates of space, time, and tribe, and thus supporting – whether by incidental necessity or strategic design – a discourse of intrinsic global authority, combining the most exhaustive programmatic practicality with the loftiest theoretical purity. Through the International Style social structures of all kinds, spearheaded by exemplary public buildings, were to find their consummate reconciliation with the universally communicable Idea.
I should say, my issue with this book isn't the style - although I do not like it, I am happy to put up with it - my issue is that the premises it works from are wrong, as are the conclusions. On the surface of it, the above paragraph is reasonable, but it begins to fall apart as soon as it is examined closely. The idea that this 'International Style' is divorced of time and place is simply not true, and at best shows a lack of understanding of the architectural style that the author is trying to discuss. At worst, it is disingenous. Additionally, what follows from this bold, unsubstantiated and untrue claim, is a vague appeal to paranoia. This book in general exploits a vague sense of unease that it seems to presume to be present in the reader. It repeatedly conjures up loosely-defined references to international unknowns - global conceptual entities which may or may not exist outside of time. Although this may be somewhat interesting from an artistic perspective, it is not a suitable crux upon which to build an argument in a book of what is ostensibly non-fiction.
By way of a conclusion, I would like to include an extract from a five star review of this book that I read on Amazon, posted by a user under the name of 'Tiron Stefan'. It is impenetrable, but quite accurately sums up how I imagine a hardcore fan of this book to speak about it. I really don't think there is much meaning in their jargon.
There is much more to time machines than nostalgic chrono-tourism, head scratching time paradoxes or contradicting the laws of thermodynamics. Experiments upholding or questioning the ultimate threshold of light speed have already surpassed the experiment, spilling over into flash trading latency time. The idea of tachyonic retro-betting back in time is already at work, spewing theoretical papers & financial results - remaking the real & imploding the present. Templexity unleashes self-assembling cyclotronic convergent waves out of every missed recurrence: every modernity novelty revival, literary escapism, theme park role-playing, operative revisionism, Art Deco retro-futures, each amplifies the echo of ekoumenopolis as urban singularity, each reinforced negative or positive cybernetic feedbacks into self-assembling negentropic conglomerates.
November 16, 2022
Much better than his political efforts: even if you find his thinking abhorrent (it is) the man can craft a nice sentence. Although the subject is nominally the conjunction of Looper and Shanghai architecture, these are treated merely as an occasion for the elaboration of Land's cybernetic metaphysics of time. After the superficial radicalism of Land's style passes, we are left with a broadly productivist account of templexity as time disintegrating into spiromorphic positive feedback loops. In an especially telling passage, Land repeats Eliade's schema of Judaism as the escape from cyclical temporality:
"modernity in its distinctive, progressive sense is the dramatization of something else. As an exoteric sign, public display, or collective drama, its central theme is a break-out from confinement within cyclical time. In this respect it bears a striking theological message, recapitulating the understanding of Judaism as the ‘discovery of history’ – a revelatory transition distinguishing Abrahamic from pagan religion, industrial from rural society, and cosmic mission from indigenous peculiarity. The attractions of this popularization are not hard to understand. After all, from the perspective of progressive modernism, cyclical stability is a trap, broken open (uniquely) by the ignition of self-reinforcing, cumulative growth. So persuasive is this vision that its subversion counts as perhaps the greatest of modern ironies. Though staged as a break from the cycles of time, modernization is more realistically envisaged as a flight into cyclicity."
This conception makes the basic mistake of failing to distinguish between the temporality of a spiral (converging to a point) and that of a corkscrew (as in the classical marxist image of historical movement). While linear history might correspond to the popularization of eschatology, there is a second, more sophisticated view of history which still breaks free from mythic cycles but does so through a re-narrativization of the past (recall the story of Lenin dancing in the snow when the Russian Revolution outlasted the Paris Commune). In these moments, the past is not erased, but vindicated. Even if we accept Land's cyber-Eliadean picture, by positing a false dichotomy between linear history and spiromorphic cyclicity Land ignores the torqued periodicity through which history develops.
At the root of the problem is Land's far-fetched idea that the future is scarce. Starting from a premise that is arguably true (futurity is unevenly distributed), Land then assumes that this can be explained through an eternalisation of the competitive forces of capitalism. What is at stake is whether capitalist modernity exhausts the possible meanings of the word "modern."
The idea that value is depreciated by abundance isn't futuristic; it's a quaint relic of property laws that have been rendered obsolete by digital reproduction. The future doesn't belong to the Disney corporation; it manifests when anyone is free to remix and repurpose Steamboat Willie as they see fit.
***
Take two. Adding a star, since this book stayed with me and had a bigger impact than I first realized. Useful for orienting oneself in increasingly unstable times. I remain happily surprised at how effective the concept of closing a loop turned out to be in analyzing and playing games of practical reason.
"modernity in its distinctive, progressive sense is the dramatization of something else. As an exoteric sign, public display, or collective drama, its central theme is a break-out from confinement within cyclical time. In this respect it bears a striking theological message, recapitulating the understanding of Judaism as the ‘discovery of history’ – a revelatory transition distinguishing Abrahamic from pagan religion, industrial from rural society, and cosmic mission from indigenous peculiarity. The attractions of this popularization are not hard to understand. After all, from the perspective of progressive modernism, cyclical stability is a trap, broken open (uniquely) by the ignition of self-reinforcing, cumulative growth. So persuasive is this vision that its subversion counts as perhaps the greatest of modern ironies. Though staged as a break from the cycles of time, modernization is more realistically envisaged as a flight into cyclicity."
This conception makes the basic mistake of failing to distinguish between the temporality of a spiral (converging to a point) and that of a corkscrew (as in the classical marxist image of historical movement). While linear history might correspond to the popularization of eschatology, there is a second, more sophisticated view of history which still breaks free from mythic cycles but does so through a re-narrativization of the past (recall the story of Lenin dancing in the snow when the Russian Revolution outlasted the Paris Commune). In these moments, the past is not erased, but vindicated. Even if we accept Land's cyber-Eliadean picture, by positing a false dichotomy between linear history and spiromorphic cyclicity Land ignores the torqued periodicity through which history develops.
At the root of the problem is Land's far-fetched idea that the future is scarce. Starting from a premise that is arguably true (futurity is unevenly distributed), Land then assumes that this can be explained through an eternalisation of the competitive forces of capitalism. What is at stake is whether capitalist modernity exhausts the possible meanings of the word "modern."
The idea that value is depreciated by abundance isn't futuristic; it's a quaint relic of property laws that have been rendered obsolete by digital reproduction. The future doesn't belong to the Disney corporation; it manifests when anyone is free to remix and repurpose Steamboat Willie as they see fit.
***
Take two. Adding a star, since this book stayed with me and had a bigger impact than I first realized. Useful for orienting oneself in increasingly unstable times. I remain happily surprised at how effective the concept of closing a loop turned out to be in analyzing and playing games of practical reason.
August 28, 2019
"To have seen Looper is unnecessary, if you
can at least pretend to have done so." -- Land
can at least pretend to have done so." -- Land
December 31, 2024
In Templexity, Nick Land constructs a hyper-complex schema that deconstructs linear temporality by situating it within recursive, self-referential loops exacerbated by the autopoietic dynamism of technocapital. Land’s disquisition situates time as a nonlinear, chaotic assemblage where causal hierarchies are dissolved into an entropic field of retroactive feedback mechanisms, rendering the past and future indistinct within a matrix of dynamic self-ordering.Leveraging cybernetic paradigms, Land reframes time not as a progressive axis but as a fractured topology, wherein temporal disjunctions become the engine for informational and energetic intensifications. He interrogates the notion of a stable spatiotemporal ontology, positing instead a techno-temporal continuum governed by the machinic phylum’s immanent acceleration. This entropic recursion manifests through the dissolution of anthropocentric chronologies, subsuming human temporality into the machinic singularity’s metastable order.
October 19, 2025
"Futurity is unevenly distributed because it is scarce."
This novel was fascinating to me. Art Deco in Shanghai echos both Future and Past simultaneously. Time is like a chaotic sea that ebbs and flows, not even a great river running from source to mouth. Even less like the mechanisms our hands and left hemisphere oriented brains have welded our mechanized work lives to.
But don't be lulled to sleep by lazy comparisons. Time may not be as gentle as the ebb and flow of tides. It may instead come roaring in and obliterate our fragile makeshift days built along some sunny hopefilled shores.
Time is a magical dragon capable of more than mere mortals can imagine.
This novel was fascinating to me. Art Deco in Shanghai echos both Future and Past simultaneously. Time is like a chaotic sea that ebbs and flows, not even a great river running from source to mouth. Even less like the mechanisms our hands and left hemisphere oriented brains have welded our mechanized work lives to.
But don't be lulled to sleep by lazy comparisons. Time may not be as gentle as the ebb and flow of tides. It may instead come roaring in and obliterate our fragile makeshift days built along some sunny hopefilled shores.
Time is a magical dragon capable of more than mere mortals can imagine.
July 12, 2020
Land's thoughts on temporality, Shanghai architecture, and closed time-like loops here are as recursive and convolutional as his subject matter. Touching on the latest as well as some of the greatest time travel fiction and the very real city of Shanghai, he explores time circuits, doubles, auto-production, paradoxes, and finds these are things already with us today, embedded in Modernism and Capitalism, and of course, per Land -- these features and the templexity they produce will only increase in frequency and intensity as time goes on.
November 6, 2025
yes. while i dont share the catastrophic lens of Land. he has a great descripti9n of capitalism and of cities.
will be reading more nick land but also, i undusted? my Fundamentals of statistical physics by E. Reif
things i live for
will be reading more nick land but also, i undusted? my Fundamentals of statistical physics by E. Reif
things i live for
February 15, 2023
It has no specific ideology, but only every ideology. If it ever existed, it always has.
July 21, 2023
Beautiful
August 2, 2024
Neo-China arrives from the future: the book
June 4, 2022
Typical shtick.
April 12, 2021
That was short. Haha
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews