1.

Who is the Skirmonaut? Or a better question:

Where is the Skirmonaut? The task of the
Skirmonaut is to constantly demarcate itself and
delimit its environment, for it is the origin of the
ecology of the screen. Its task is to delimit the

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screen. In so doing, it constantly rediscovers that
screening is itself this act of delimitation.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe Skirmonaut is the preemptively, or even
proleptically, nostalgic creature par excellence.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe Skirmonaut is diabolical. It operates
according to the logic of the smirk. Twisted, it
coils not insidiously (sinuously, unctuously), but
rather according to the helical topology of
reflection and deflection. The Skirmonaut is
Tavi Meraud always only ever tangential Ð limning, deflecting,
and reflecting back, returning.
Field Guide to ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThis is why we must return to the beginning.
The being of the Skirmonaut is essentially
enmeshed with the problem of location. The
Skirmology: Skirmonaut is a spatial creature, but it operates
in a space whose own geometry begins to be
Handbook for known only through skirmological activities,
which in the end can only be improvisations.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ2.
the Skirmonaut What are the self-assigned tasks of the
Skirmonaut? They are necessarily self-assigned,
for Skirmology is only ever an amateur science, if
it can be designated a science at all. The task at
e-flux journal #65 SUPERCOMMUNITY Ñ mayÐaugust 2015 Ê Tavi Meraud

hand is ostensibly to demarcate the screen. And

this is precisely what operates at the degree zero
of being any thing at all; hence the science
thereof must remain an amateur endeavor (if by
amateur we mean the rampant allowance for a
Field Guide to Skirmology: Handbook for the Skirmonaut

total exemption from regulations Ð in which all

linearity of thought and organized activity bursts
into confetti skirmishes of sparkles, curves, the
glitter of rogue galaxies).
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe Skirmonaut, then, practices the
unwitting, hasty, and only-ever-amateur art of an
alchemical cartography that resembles most
closely a provisional piracy, a disorganized
navigation (in the quaintest, canonical sense), a
frantic but constant assemblage. Skirmology is
not the simple transcribing of the territory of the
screen, but rather the establishing of an
archaeology simultaneous to an unfolding of its
topography.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIf the Skirmonaut is an adventurer in the
canonical sense, it must be equipped with some
arsenal of tools. Yes, these are the keys that,
when concatenated in the appropriate way,
release the thing that was always there yet until
that moment invisible. For a moment, the map is
finally one with the territory described. The two
are touching on all points, one-to-one.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThese keys support the first foray towards
some understanding of the screenÕs surface.
Capturing it and sampling it so it can be pored
over. A constant assemblage. And much

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repetition. Many mistakes. The hands are singular complicity Ð displaying, alleging, or
sometimes shaky. There is an urgency. As we announcing a deep, hyper-penetrative complicity
have said, the Skirmonaut is plagued by the with the environment. Otherwise it fails and the
singular pestilence of a proleptic nostalgia, a organism dies.
longing that bends backwards from the future; a ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBut here, if the camouflage fails, nothing
doubled longing that accelerates the hastiness, dies. This is the inherent, perennial elusiveness

04/06
inflects the shakiness. Symptoms of precocious of screens. Where is the screen? What is the
degeneration perhaps. In any case, there is a screen? How is the screen? Why screen? Screen
twisting of time in a place organized by time who, exactly?
stamps. Everything is thoroughly diseased with ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThere is no environment beyond the
temporal pestilence. organism. Moby Dick will be found but will be so
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe Skirmonaut, then, weds cartography expansive that we can no longer speak of dermis,
and divination (cartography as divination; of the membranal, epidermatological distinction
divination as a particular variety of cartography). between the animal and the environment. The
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBut the Skirmonaut also releases a animal becomes the environment. This is what
seismological revolution rippling across the the SkirmonautÕs activity merely highlights.
screenÕs topography. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe Skirmonaut belongs to some
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊTaking a screenshot is a means to subdivision of the Cult of Moby Dick. It
delineate/delimit what the screen is. But what simultaneously searches for the Moby Dick and
results is an image of the screen that is, for a the Aspidochelone, slinking around in a region
moment, identical to the original. With only a where these two are probably one and the same.
pixel of displacement, we are offering some kind To arrive at the shores of the whale-as-land,
of camouflage for the screen. The screen is whaleisland Ð or to wake up in the proverbial
suddenly protected (think of the German word cetological bowel, only to realize that the whale
Schirm, as that protective, sheltering cover, as a itself is located in yet another, greater ventral
second skin). Camouflage is never the second cavity. Of whose? Where?
skin. Camouflage must always collude with the ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊTo denature and dilute to transparency, the
skin through betraying it, as a chaos and opacity of the screen.
double/doubled/doubling agent, simultaneously ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ3.
in cahoots with the wearer and the environment. The map the Skirmonaut-as-cartographer-
The camouflage must ostensibly profess a diviner creates suspends itself between the

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visible and invisible. If the Skirmonaut should, threshold/window into something else.
however, leave behind a legible trace, how does Congealing, which is the essential principle of
this look, and what could it be? Ostensibly a constellating. And notarized by the timestamp
screenshot, a pixel or two displaced. Slightly that becomes its name, its cosmological
displaced screenshot displayed upon designation in this unraveling galaxy.
screenshot. A sloppy palimpsest, a mock ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ4.

05/06
sedimentary crossÊsection of an utterly Domestication of chaos. The Skirmonaut only
fraudulent geology. A screen wishes to have no imitates the ocular grazing of the search engine.
depth, but to operate (in loop) in that optative As suggestively arcane as the vernacular of the
mode only begins to reveal its depths. shipping forecast.
Shimmering and scale-like. Positively piscine. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊConstellation Ð terrestrial domestication of
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊMultiple windows flattened into that the firmament.
instance of a click. (To study the Skirmonaut and ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe Skirmonaut reveals the screen as
its fugitive skirmishes may well lead to a operating on the iridescent principle. The
musicology of click-cacophony, but in the end, twinning of the Iridic and Hermetic ethoses.
the auditory has been bracketed.) All that ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ5.
remains is the study in camouflage, for in that An Excursus on Virtuality. What the alchemical-
instance of flattening, collapsing, only ostensible cartographical efforts of the Skirmonaut
collapsing occurs Ð it is really collating, delineateÊis not so much the virtuality of the real,
coagulating. i.e., the real seeming-ness of the real, but the
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe screenshot becomes a divinatory map real of the virtual, which again, chiasmic,
of screen-as-such. It is the image of the screen intertwines into the realm of the virtual. The
that most closely approximates it. It is, for a realm where the lines of the real and the virtual
moment, the screen. It screens the screen. It begin to blur precisely because the effects in the
screens screen screening. meatspace body are real. The SkirmonautÕs
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊScreening the screen, as it were. Threshold. frantic capturing of the screen, ostensibly in the
Screenshot is playing at the threshold of screen name of its silly narcissistic-xenophilic science,
as delimitation/delimited space versus reveals the domestication of the fleshed self (for

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once upon a time, the Skirmonaut was birthed of Tavi Meraud is an artist currently based in Connecticut
a fleshy, voluptuous womb). This is why, for the and New York.Ê
Skirmonaut, the question of architecture and of
locality is of the greatest urgency.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ6.
Skirmology, the perennial rehearsal of
ambiguities, the ambiguity precisely of t/here.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ7.
Ambiguity of the primordial soup. Doused in
stardust. Always already a junkie for the stuff.
Here is the final reminder of the imperative that
yokes the Skirmonaut, its umbilical tether-cord
e-flux journal #65 SUPERCOMMUNITY Ñ mayÐaugust 2015 Ê Tavi Meraud

that simultaneously connects it to the flesh-

mother-ship and to that other uncharted
expanse. Here is the final reminder that
intrepidity is so often perceivable in figurations
of loneliness. Skirmology might be summed up
Field Guide to Skirmology: Handbook for the Skirmonaut

as a surrendering of will to
dispersing/atomizing/vaporizing oneself into the
unknown Ð touching. Skimming.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe Skirmonaut might be afraid of
becoming burned by a new kind of sun, whose
rays enter from the outside of a vast inside.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ8.
The Skirmonaut, in the end, must be a kind of
simpleton. And lonely.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ9.
Outside (where?) a taxi sharking around for any
body slinks by, half-lit.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ×
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAll images courtesy of Tavi Meraud.

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