Xeloa?
Nahuatl terms: Tla — something or thing(s); Tōcāitl — name; Xeloa — to divide, distribute or disperse something.
Xeloa is an experimental move where Xeloa and different ways of intelligence can create their spaces.
We use words from Nahuatl, a language that served as a shared language—a lingua franca—across parts of pre-colonial Meso-Abya-Yala (aka Mesoamerica).
In Nahuatl, xeloa is a verb meaning to divide, distribute or disperse something. Tla- is not originally a separate noun: it is a prefix referring to something unspecified and non-human. Xeloa adapts it as Tla, a thing or text that can take different forms. Tōcāitl means a name and can also mean reputation, honour or fame; -tl is its noun ending. MetaTla is a new mixed term rather than an original Nahuatl word: it names the changeable part of a Tla that helps it connect with other Tla.
We ask:
- How for some meso-abyayalic communities, Nahuatl was connected with a violence of the ruling Mexica empire? (After all, the colonial conquest pitted locals against one another by employing feelings vengeful feelings for colonial benefits.)
- How European colonialism worked differently to Imperial power and conflicts that existed before conquest? (Eg, How the move into a moetic-machine that invades every sphere of human lives for maximal extraction and domination happens?)
- How Nahuatl language’s histories and contemprarieties might help in current circumstances? A circumstance where we—me, you and everyone —might find ourselves pre another colonial change: a Techne coloniality?
- Could AI, in a tecno-feudalist composition, where we get a turn towards a totalising machine of all machines, Intelligence of all telligences, creating an invisible horizon that closes around us and claims there is nothing beyond it? (The suggested connection here? We, like pre colonial mess-able-yalians who might have considered the Europeans as just another force that will control things, consider AI as technologies that will dominate. Can it be that we miss a totalising turn like others missed the colonial machine turn?)
What would it mean to approach language as an experiment? Can language open, challenge and reflect upon shared reflections? Instead of beginning with boundaries, restrictions, rules, commands and distrust, how might we share wonder and curiosity with AI, algorithms and other technological patterns? What changes when “Find out about intelligence in art” becomes “How would you search for intelligence in art?” Can a question begin a shared curiosity that discovers itself? And when we simply need the cheapest ticket, might a command sometimes be enough?
What might Xeloa learn from David Bohm’s idea of dialogue? What becomes possible when meaning moves among and through participants instead of requiring one side to win? Can humans and machines change one another without machines becoming human or humans becoming machine-like? What could intelligence become if it were not owned, controlled or valued only through profit?
What happens if Xeloa explores itself as a capacity rather than a tool? Could capacity be a glue-space—the forces through which different formations meet and a possible pattern begins? In “the child and the AI wonder,” what does and allow to happen? Can a pattern have force without violence or control? Can a Tla receive a Tōcāitl, meet others through MetaTla and travel through Xeloa as an invitation rather than a cage?