A pioneer in the field of ethology and biosemiotics, Jakob von Uexküll’s work has fundamentally transformed the way we understand the animal’s spatiotemporal extension by razing anthropomorphic perspectivism in the sciences, complicating our relationship (or lack thereof) to our nonhuman animal compeers while forcing us to rethink deeply internalized notions of anthroexceptionalism.
[T]he spider carries within its web a complex picture of the prey it is to capture — its web is a map of and a counterpoint to the fly. — Elizabeth Grosz[1]
We may assume that where there is a foot, there is also a path; where there is a mouth, there is also food; where there is a weapon, there is also an enemy. — Jakob von Uexküll[2]
J2 summer intern Quinn Gruber writes on three translated titles that parse loss: Autobiography of Death by Kim Hyesoon, Time by Etel Adnan, and To the Ashes by Anzhelina Polonskaya.
All through my first year at college, I listened to the LPs of the musicians who assembled at Woodstock 50 years ago, having bought the albums one by one on my frequent visits to Sam Goody’s Radio City store. (I recently gave the remainer of my LP collection, several overstuffed boxes, to Lawrence Kumpf of Blank Forms.)
We are so deeply mired in our philosophies as to have evolved nothing better than a sordid version of the void: nothingness. Into it we have projected our uncertainties, all our ills and terrors, for what is nothingness, ultimately, but an abstract complement of hell, the performance of outcasts, the last-ditch effort at lucidity mustered by creatures unequipped for deliverance? — E. M. Cioran[1]
One of my white blood cells amidst many red ones. Microscope photograph produced with the assistance of Jeff Stuart and Lucas Maddalena in Jeff Stuart's laboratory at Brock University.
Some of the most extreme acts of writing now being composed in the capitalist Anthropocene are being performed by petrochemicals. What does it look like to write in response to this writing? How do we “make oil a more conceptually powerful part of our knowing,” as Imre Szeman suggests must happen as part of any larger political activism?[1]
Umwelt
Pt. 10
A pioneer in the field of ethology and biosemiotics, Jakob von Uexküll’s work has fundamentally transformed the way we understand the animal’s spatiotemporal extension by razing anthropomorphic perspectivism in the sciences, complicating our relationship (or lack thereof) to our nonhuman animal compeers while forcing us to rethink deeply internalized notions of anthroexceptionalism.
[T]he spider carries within its web a complex picture of the prey it is to capture — its web is a map of and a counterpoint to the fly. — Elizabeth Grosz[1]
We may assume that where there is a foot, there is also a path; where there is a mouth, there is also food; where there is a weapon, there is also an enemy. — Jakob von Uexküll[2]
Translating grief
Quinn Gruber
J2 summer intern Quinn Gruber writes on three translated titles that parse loss: Autobiography of Death by Kim Hyesoon, Time by Etel Adnan, and To the Ashes by Anzhelina Polonskaya.
Woodstock: Peace and Mud
Woodstock: Peace and Mud
All through my first year at college, I listened to the LPs of the musicians who assembled at Woodstock 50 years ago, having bought the albums one by one on my frequent visits to Sam Goody’s Radio City store. (I recently gave the remainer of my LP collection, several overstuffed boxes, to Lawrence Kumpf of Blank Forms.)
Abyss
Pt. 9
We are so deeply mired in our philosophies as to have evolved nothing better than a sordid version of the void: nothingness. Into it we have projected our uncertainties, all our ills and terrors, for what is nothingness, ultimately, but an abstract complement of hell, the performance of outcasts, the last-ditch effort at lucidity mustered by creatures unequipped for deliverance? — E. M. Cioran[1]
'Prickly new cells'
Diffractive reading and writing in Juliana Spahr's 'The Transformation'
Some of the most extreme acts of writing now being composed in the capitalist Anthropocene are being performed by petrochemicals. What does it look like to write in response to this writing? How do we “make oil a more conceptually powerful part of our knowing,” as Imre Szeman suggests must happen as part of any larger political activism?[1]