Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Yasmin_discussions Digest, Vol 26, Issue 2

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THIS IS THE YASMIN-DISCUSSIONS DIGEST


Today's Topics:

1. Re: Post Pandemic Provocation no 7: B.C. Before and A.C.
After the Coronacene (YASMIN DISCUSSIONS)
2. kerry turnstall and (YASMIN DISCUSSIONS)


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Message: 1
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2020 09:25:10 -0400
From: YASMIN DISCUSSIONS <yasmin_discussions@ntlab.gr>
To: yasmin_discussions@ntlab.gr
Subject: Re: [Yasmin_discussions] Post Pandemic Provocation no 7: B.C.
Before and A.C. After the Coronacene
Message-ID:
<mailman.1.1586875949.30475.yasmin_discussions_ntlab.gr@ntlab.gr>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

Dear All,

I appreciate very much Roger?s provocation that more ?unnecessary" research is called for in light of the Coronacene. In late capitalism/neoliberalism, ?necessary? is so often defined as serving corporate interests ahead of those of people, as if what is in the interest of profit for the few will, in some ill-defined ?long run,? benefit the broader public. In my view, the false ?logic? of fiduciary responsibility requires immediate eradication. In my recent thesis <https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/415/> I argue that we can look to earlier movements for inspiration on how to approach such an effort...

In the first half of the 20th century, in light of the absurdity of millions of deaths, both from WWI and the pandemic of 1918, the Dadaists and Surrealists challenged the brutal ?logic? that envisioned a kind of ?progress? that left so much suffering and destruction in its wake. I argue that knowledge produced by the contemporary environmental humanities?in keeping with the spirit of some in the earlier Romantic Naturalist and avant-garde movements?in powerfully producing alternative models?can contribute to the production of fair, just, ethical ?logics,? ones that have the power to replace prevailing exploitative ones.

I wrote the following sub-provocation as a follow-up to a Zoom call on the newly-forming Post Pandemic Provocations Group with Victoria Vesna, Nina Czegledy, Joel Slayton, and Roger Malina (text also available as a blog post <http://alycesantoro.blogspot.com/2020/04/an-anti-virus.html>?please see accompanying stop-action animation with sound on Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/alyce.santoro/videos/10156882334896813/> or Instagram <https://www.instagram.com/p/B-7jgVYF5rN/>).

Looking forward,
Alyce Santoro
delicate empiricist ? philosoprovocateur ? social surrealist <https://www.alycesantoro.com/>


AN ANTI-VIRUS

COVID-19 has quickly and profoundly illustrated the extent to which environments, livelihoods, and even microbiomes are globally-entangled and mutually-dependent; the health of one hinges, directly or indirectly, on the health of all.
Symbiosis is a term used in biology to describe cooperation between different species for shared benefit?lichens, a composite of algae and fungus, for example. Certain species of figs, wasps, and the parasites living within wasp guts are mutually dependent; each can exist only in relation to the others.[i] <applewebdata://60575647-C2BF-49AB-A343-D04FC030EF7D#_edn1>
While the microorganisms that dwell within humans are not necessarily specific to Homo sapiens, they are so abundant that approximately half ?our? genetic material does not belong to ?us,? but to microbes that play vital roles in nutrient absorption, immunity, and cognitive function.[ii] <applewebdata://60575647-C2BF-49AB-A343-D04FC030EF7D#_edn2> Microbiology reveals that human beings, at the same time that we are exquisitely unique individuals, we are also dynamic meta-organisms, cooperative communities teaming with life.

The microbes within us arrive from all around, gleaned from food, air, soil, and water. A bite of apple grown in New Zealand, a potato grown in Peru, a tomato grown in one?s own backyard. A breath of air that arrived on a breeze from the Sahara, captured and imparted to fellow riders in a subway car in New York, Paris, or Hong Kong. Aspects of seemingly distant people and places are constantly becoming parts of our infinitely individual, yet paradoxically multitudinous, selves. Fellow humans, other-than-humans, and even that which is not universally considered ?alive? (a water molecule, for example) all become parts of what make us ?us.?

COVID-19 brings the question of boundaries between beings starkly into focus: if we are all constantly exchanging biological (and other) material on a global scale, then perceived ?others? are, in tangible ways, extensions of ourselves. One possible remedy, then?not only for the problem of the current pandemic but for other catastrophes-in-progress?is to care for everything and everyone as if this is the case.

Perhaps this collective realization is a conceptual anti-virus with the radically beneficial, evolutionarily advantageous effect of driving those it touches into states of deep love and respect for the world and its inhabitants. Symptoms may include increased empathy, sense of wonder, and desire to be of service to others. This contagion becomes active simply by imagining it.


[i] <applewebdata://60575647-C2BF-49AB-A343-D04FC030EF7D#_ednref1> Kirksey, Eban, ?Species: A Praxiographic Study,? Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, December 15, 2015, 758-780. Accessed April 12, 2020: https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-9655.12286 <https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-9655.12286>
[ii] <applewebdata://60575647-C2BF-49AB-A343-D04FC030EF7D#_ednref2> Rees, Tobias, Thomas Bosch, and Angela E. Douglas, ?How the Microbiome Challenges Our Concept of Self,? PLoS Biol 16(2), February 9, 2018. Accessed April 12, 2020: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2005358 <https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2005358>






> On Apr 4, 2020, at 11:41 PM, YASMIN DISCUSSIONS <yasmin_discussions@ntlab.gr> wrote:
>
> yasminers
> In a previous email Alyce Santoro gave us three proocations for the
> post pandemic summarised below
> but in full at
> http://malina.diatrope.com/2020/04/04/post-pandemic-provocation-no-7-b-c-before-and-a-c-after-the-coronacene/
>
> Post Pandemic Provocation no 7: B.C. Before and A.C. After the Coronacene
>
> Let us Give the Bacteria and Viruses a Voice- Artists can already hear
> them, can you?
>
> or : The Anthropocene has become the ?Coronacene?, with poetic sound
> incense transforming us, thanks to the work of artscientists
> described below.
>
> This blog post on behalf of one of many small emerging post pandemic
> Leonardo villages: seaded by Nina Czegledy, Joel Slayton, Diana Ayton
> Shenker, Alyce Santoro, and 296 others named below.
>
> We live in strange times when the desirable unexpected may need to be provoked.
>
> Provocation 1:
>
> In times like this, we need more un-necessary research,
>
> Not Provocative: less un-necessary travel, email and texting and
> un-necessary consumption
>
> Provocation 2: but above all we must re-define the un-necessary.
>
> (I learned these new-old ideas at the STARTS village reunion at IRCAM
> in Paris ( https://vertigo.starts.eu/ )
> just two weeks before the world started having a covid 19 panic attack.
>
> So here we go:
>
> Nina Czegledy, Joel Slayton and I were tasked by the new Leonardo CEO
> Diana Ayton-Shenker (https://www.leonardo.info/led/19253 ) to think
> aloud about how the Leonardo art,science,technology (
> https://www.leonardo.info/welink-ten-easy-pieces ) villages of
> villages could have an impact in these chaotic and turbulent times of
> COVID 19.
>
> We are slowly stewing a Proven?ale Bouillabaisse that could become a
> Leonardo Post Pandemic Provocation Soup.
>
> Alyce Santoro in the Yasmin village
> (http://yasminlist.blogspot.com/2020/ ) proposed three types of
> provocations:
>
> she said:
> I suggest that in the post-pandemic world, creative practices (ones
> that arouse the imagination, senses, and emotions??
> . The objective stance we are obliged to take as good scientists in
> fact reinforces the notion that humans are autonomous entities/outside
> observers, separate from one another and the biosphere?
> An Intricate Ensemble: The Art-Science of An Ecological Imaginary for
> the Anthropocene Epoch? is available for download in its entirety at
> RISD Digital Commons:
> https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/415/
> <https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/415/>.
>
> No doubt members of our villages can come up with others ? Rap them out !
>
> The good news is that a team of artscience researchers have already
> developed the methods to hear the sounds of bacteria, but also viruses
> (ask Scot Gresham Lancaster, Gagan Wig and Sharath Chandra Ram who
> have pioneered techniques through our Data Stethoscope projects: )
>
> Watch the YouTube video led by Ritwik Kaikini that shows the simple
> techniques that artists, working with scientists, developed to listen
> to the sound of bacteria colonies growing, expanding and also dying.
>
> If only we could hear the Corona Virus COVID 19, then humans could
> adapt their behaviors to co-exist. Oops we do not want to destroy
> viruses and bacteria, we need them for us to exist at all, we need to
> be all in the microbiome happy together.
>
> So below, is the illustration of one technique for hearing bacteria,
> there are many, by the UTD Dallas ArtSciLab (
> https://artscilab.atec.io/ ) with the Gassensmith Bio Chemistry Lab
>
> Here below , in turn, in detail:
>
> A) Alyce Santoro?s Threefold Provocation
>
> Followed by the
>
> B) BioLux Chants project that allowed humans to hear the sound of
> bacteria singing for the first time. Listen here:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-pmmKRMT9w
>
> C) Ayen Deng and her team or artistphysicists have been giving voice
> to carbon nanotubes that could be useful to help us co exist with
> Covid 19.
>
> Roger in Dallas, please phone/txt/ +15108532007 if urgent
> The Malinas+1 are fine, but we have friends with Covid19
> Take care.
>
> to read the rest of this yasmin post pandemic procation go to:
>
> http://malina.diatrope.com/2020/04/04/post-pandemic-provocation-no-7-b-c-before-and-a-c-after-the-coronacene/
>
> and to all yasminers please provoke us
>
> Roger Malina
>
> _______________________________________________
> Yasmin_discussions mailing list
> Yasmin_discussions@ntlab.gr
> http://ntlab.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions_ntlab.gr



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Message: 2
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2020 10:03:55 -0500
From: YASMIN DISCUSSIONS <yasmin_discussions@ntlab.gr>
To: yasmin_discussions@ntlab.gr
Subject: [Yasmin_discussions] kerry turnstall and
Message-ID:
<mailman.2.1586876743.30475.yasmin_discussions_ntlab.gr@ntlab.gr>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

to: kerry turnstall and the other village idiots who make use of the yasmin
list

Kerry

your email got me thinking- as alyce santoro mentioned the Post Pandemic
Provocation
village is assembling

so you ask:

I was thinking that most yasmine posts come from scientists that present
art. Would that be true?
Kerry Turnstall

so : maybe after the pandemic we will abandon the current taxonomy of
knowledge
since it proved useless in having human societies anticipate , prepare for
and
deal with worldwide pandemics.

As the human population reaches 10 billion
with concentrations of people breathing on each other all the time in
absurdly
dense human settlements clearly we have
to abandon the idea that the categories of artist and scientist still make
sense ?

but more seriously why do you ask the question ? yasmin is a village that
has
been randomly formed over the last 10 years with individuals coming and
going

the anchors have been the moderators;
dimitris charitos does kerry's question make sense to you ?
Nina ?
Alyce ?
Guillermo ?
Jadwiga ?
Monica ?
Ricardo ?
Houssine ?
Roger ? oops thats me
Myriam ?
Pier Luigi ?
Marta ?
Ana ?
Hadel ?
Erika ?
Do you consider yourself artists or scientists or ?
roger
The YASMIN list is currently moderated by the following team : Pau Alsina,
Dimitris Charitos, Nina Czegledy,Monica Bello, Ricardo Mbarkho, Guillermo
Munoz Matutano, Houssine Soussi, Roger Malina.

Regional correspondents of YASMIN are Myriam Ait Houmerach Hammani in
Algeria, Nahla Mattar in Egypt, Marta de Menezes in Portugal,Pier Luigi
Capucci and NoemaLab magazine in Italy, Hadel Nazmy in Egypt, Erika
Katalina Pasztor in Hungary, Ana Peraica in Croatia and "Piratas de la
Ciencia" in Spain. If you would like to help as a moderator or
correspondent contact us.

The Yasmin mailing list was originally made possible thanks to ISOC
(Internet Society), The Rockefeller Foundation, Leonardo/Olats, The
University of Athens, Artnodes- UOC Barcelona and all the coordinators from
the "Yasmin Group". It is co-sponsored by the DigiArts Programme of UNESCO.
We currently have no funding and the network is run by will-power. Help Us
!!

Kind regards
Kerry Tunstall
Roger in Dallas, please phone/txt/ +15108532007 if urgent
The Malinas+1 are fine, but we have friends with Covid19
The Yuris's night and malinas 70th birthday party has started at
http://yurisnightdfw.com/
I would love to record a short video with you discussing your
ideas related to remembering for the future, how space activities
can help us create a sustainable culture.- drop me an email


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