Collective

GIGACITIES COLLECTIVE started as a transnational collaborative project exploring the impact of Tesla’s Gigafactories in Austin, Berlin, and beyond. Early in the process, the collective understood that Gigafactories are not standalone industrial complexes. Instead, they are embedded in socio-capitalist and environmental networks spanning the globe. With astonishing speed, omnivorous Elon has spread around the world like a force of nature, occupying public domains and news outlets at high speed. He has become the center of attraction for Silicon Valley, rightwing politicians, tech bros, and suburban yuppies. We knew the time was ripe to start undressing the personality traits and problematic influences of this phenomenon.

In the two years we have been working on our project, a novel Elon has started to emerge. After he bought Twitter and incorporated the company into his vision of an “everything app” called X, the brown stains of the messianic savior became increasingly visible to the public. In this sense, the world is catching on to his tricks: the eco-hype, the empty promises, the authoritarian labor practices, and endless trolling.

The GIGACITIES COLLECTIVE never fell for the promises of clean and green mobility that Musk was selling. So, we embarked on a journey to create the ELON MAGAZINE. Working together as scholars, journalists, artists, and activists, we have tackled the Elonian Hype Machine, the macho staging of his vexatious personality, the undermining of the public good for maximum techno-capitalist exploitation, and the psychedelic mindsets that have fueled his rapacious quest for domination. We hope it sheds new light on the most powerful CEO in the world today.

Randy Lewis

Randolph Lewis is Chair and Professor of American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of five books including Under Surveillance: Being Watched in Modern America. He has produced six documentary films. He is also the founder and editor of The End of Austin, a digital humanities project about urban transformation that can be found at endofaustin.com.

N. N.

N. is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department for Cultural Anthropology and a research associate at the Department of American Studies at UT Austin. His research circles the materiality and historicity of knowledge, archival ethnography, and visual anthropology. In his ethnographic fieldwork, Florian focuses on the proliferation of histories through time and the visual representation of the everyday. As an ethnographic filmmaker and freelance curator, his works intersect the public, academic, and artistic spheres.

Craig campbell

Craig Campbell teaches anthropology at the University of Texas in Austin. He works in and theorizes through design, photography, print, installation, and curation. More recently he has focused on longtermism, West Texas, and greetings in a time of catastrophe. Craig was a member of the Ethnographic Terminalia curatorial collective and is actively collaborating on Writing with Light. He is one of the directors of the Bureau for Experimental Ethnography.

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