Outer Edges (Session 5)

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: owner ruling 2026-07-11: institutional recordings released except fee-charging course content; lane recent-institutional -> recent-institutional-released). Series: Outer Edges. 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

  Hello everyone. I welcome you all to the fifth session of Nick Lan's Outer Edges, 21st Century Spatial Metapolitics. The class took a long hiatus. We had our summer residency in between and lots of stuff happened. But now we're back with Nick and can't wait for him to begin his lecture. So I'm going to pass…

• 00:19:04

  There is something that is retrospective or retroactive about the kind of reinstitutionalization of these Western expanses into the growing United States. And I think by the very nature of the thing, there is probably a tendency to overestimate the degree to which there is a kind of preordained Central American plan…

• 00:37:59

  But there is not a wave of colonial settlement rolling west, yeah rolling west out of China. And often where like because China has so much been pushed up against the Malthusian limit all the time and had these dense populations that are a big problem. The Chinese state would often have to actually move people…

• 00:55:47

  And obviously when the British arrived in China, or the Westerners generally, they'd arrange these meetings with the political officials and they'd be told to sod off. You know, we don't want your trinkets and weird stuff, manufacturers. You're just bad news. You're pollution. You're, we don't want this stuff. And…

• 01:13:03

  I think that these new space companies... Obviously, they're not going to be the same space companies. They're going to be the same space companies. Obviously, most famously SpaceX, but there's like three or four of them, or maybe more actually, depending on how you're going to define them, are interestingly liminal…

• 01:30:47

  These goods that were of inestimable value to the native peoples. Like if you could buy rifles, your whole position is totally transformed. And so there's this weird sort of advanced wave of cultural liquefaction that goes ahead of it through this sort of trading process. Like the people would first go out there…

• 01:50:28

  I don't know. I mean, people might want to disagree. I agree with you. And I did not bring this up to say that this is the origin of colonialism at all. But I was just saying all these different ways at which all sorts of justification, mythologies, necessities, economic, or whatnot, were utilized at different periods…

• 02:20:12

  I would totally totally totally totally appreciate it and hopefully we can take parts in the project cool especially the artist Sam Sam and uh uh god my mind is just killing me Amy okay so I'm gonna stop the broadcast everyone thank you so much okay thanks everybody thanks everybody