1.1 Introduction

Provenance

Self-transcribed from the recording's audio/video with Whisper ASR, then drawn from the frozen curation of the CCRU oral archive. The identifiers below fingerprint the exact source transcript files.

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Adjudicated APPROVED 2026-07-11 (basis: stage-1 acceptance ruling — lane unknown approved for opus-only hosting; mp3 tier deferred pending a disk volume). Series: CCRU Lectures. Source: audio original (.mp3).

Timestamped map

These jump targets come from timestamps preserved in the source transcript, so they work as navigational anchors rather than editorially invented section labels. Timings are approximate — they mark where a passage begins, not exact word timing.

• 00:00:00

  Welcome to the first lecture in the philosophy of the CCRU lecture series, CCRU, otherwise known as the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit. This first lecture serves both as an introduction to the course but also as an overview of some of the fundamentals needed to understand the work of the CCRU. So what…

• 00:01:30

  didn't truly want to be part of the academic structure or any part of the bureaucracy that was going that goes on within universities. It's made clear from that that historically, you know, the CCRU has never been in a sort of favourable position with regards to authority, academia or institutions. Alongside this…

• 00:03:03

  was attempting to find a connection of sorts between a multitude of disciplines and in their efforts, stripped back the entire idea of what a discipline is, especially in regard to philosophy. They wish to sort of melt the edges of thinking into an assemblage of highly charged originality. The existence of the CCRU…

• 00:03:51

  What I'm trying to do with this course is sort of focus primarily on their actual work as philosophy, because I think it's relatively important and it's some of the most interesting philosophical work to come out of the UK for a very, very long time. The primary text we will be referring to in relation to the CCRU…

• 00:05:57

  work is only made clear by a certain form of experience. And as such, the task of these lectures is to outline the philosophy, the theorisation and the writing of the CCRU, as opposed to any conjecture regarding practice. With that said, there are various hints of practice scattered throughout, especially within…

• 00:07:32

  Communique 2. Now, both of these act as sort of abstract philosophical biography of the group, as opposed to any actual real background. Now, there are various snippets of biography laying around. An Experiment in Inhumanism by Robin McKay is a clear one, which I will link. And there's also sort of reviews and things…

• 00:08:51

  However, I'd like to pay closer attention to the final sentence there regarding impersonality. The CCRU can't be considered a collective in any sort of human grouping sense, as I've sort of already said, but more an assemblage of bodies and ideas, which had certain obscure and alternative aims. Alongside this…

• 00:09:24

  And so to reiterate, this isn't a lecture series on the CCRU themselves or their history, which I know many people are interested in, but this is a series on their philosophy, their work and on deciphering their philosophy.