An Urban Political from the "End of the World": Dock Nine and its Technical Epistles

ABSTRACT: This essay explores some resonances between the measures taken by the intensely subjugated residents of an urban district in Jayapura, West Papua (Indonesia) and notions of the "technical" examined by multiple strands in philosophies of media/computation, as well as Black thought. It explores some of the collective orientations and practices deployed to address a context of intensive subjugation, emphasizing these practices as modes of technicity applied to sustaining ways of acting in concert in a situation that continually undermines social coherence and intimacy. This exploration aims to further an understanding of a Black urban politics; to encompass the orientations and practices of "resistance" as technical operations to mitigate the experiences of capture and foster a sense of indeterminacy in the dispositions of ongoing colonial rule.