CCRU

The Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU) was an experimental cultural theorist collective formed in late 1995 at Warwick University, England[1] and gradually separated from academia until it dissolved in 2003. It garnered reputation for its idiosyncratic and surreal "theory-fiction" which incorporated cyberpunk and Gothic horror, and its work has since had an online cult following related to the rise in popularity of accelerationism. The CCRU are strongly associated with their former leading members, Sadie Plant, Mark Fisher and Nick Land.[2][3] The CCRU's work is characterized by loose, abstract theoretical writing combining elements of cyberpunk and Gothic horror with critical theory, esotericism, numerology and demonology, which often interplay in their deployment of occult systems and surreal narratives.[4] One of the CCRU's predominant ideas is hyperstition, which Nick Land referred to as "the experimental (techno-)science of self-fulfilling prophecies" where, by means of esoteric cybernetic principles, certain ideas and beliefs that are initially incomprehensible (akin to superstitions) can covertly circulate through reality and establish cultural feedback loops that then drastically meld society (meme magic?), which they also referred to in total as "cultural production".[5] The CCRU's esoteric numerological cybernetic system for comprehending hyperstition, the Numogram, often appears in their writings alongside its circulatory zones and their respective demons.[4] In addition to drawing inspiration from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, to which references can be found in the CCRU's writings, the collective drew inspiration from writers including H. P. Lovecraft, William Gibson, J. G. Ballard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Octavia Butler, William S. Burroughs, Carl Jung and various other sources related to critical theory, science fiction, anthropology and nanotechnology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetic_Culture_Research_Unit