“They(boychild) often seem to be struggling to free themselves from tethers. Their body arcs and undulates as if conducting a live current from tip to toe. They braid themselves with the floor and emerge from strange landscapes like a visitor from the future.”
—— Halberstam, J. (2020)."Making a Move - Object Lessons in Trans* Art", More-than-Human.
"System of Conductors x lám-nuā" reading session 2, we will explore how to shake the core of (linear, developmental-centered) time and create collective and diverse imaginations through Undoing the Future (Karen Barad, 2018); we will focus on Agitation (Mel Y. Chen, 2018) as a vibrant existence rather than strategies to eliminate it; and we will delve into Queer Fire: Ecology, Combustion, and Pyrosexual Desire (Nigel Clark and Kathryn Yusoff, 2018), from ancient ovens and pottery kilns to the foundries of rolling, shining urban desires, where the competition for efficiency and profit drives the mass production, trade, labor, enslavement, and sexual exploitation of specific categories of bodies—human, animal, and plant. How does fire untangle these entanglements?
Continuing from the session 1, which discussed Tidal Pools as Containers of Care, Twinning, and Hsinchu Science Park: An Anthropological Perspective 竹科：人類學的觀點, we focused on interdependent material reaction chains. The journey will continue to explore the conductivity of copper, accompanied by the Feeled Walk: Horseshoe Crab. Whether it is within living organisms or between technological objects and abandoned mines, we will prepare ourselves for the collaborative creation of A MAP, as Guideline for (not yet here) Future Becomings.
We anticipate the collective reading to last for two hours, but feel free to come and go according to your personal needs.
🐌【Sign up】https://forms.gle/ddonVWU1oeQxzfDL7
🐌【Date & Location】
- Date | 7th, May, 16:00-18:00 (GMT+8)
- Location | C-LAB CREATORS R303 + Online ( https://meet.jit.si/hydrocommons )
- Support by | Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab, C-LAB
🐌【Text】
➩ Barad, K. (2018). Undoing the Future, Barnard Center for Research on Women, Recorded on March 19, 2018 at Barnard College in NYC.
➩ Chen, M. Y. (2018). Agitation. South Atlantic Quarterly, 117(3), 551-566.
➩ Clark, N., & Yusoff, K. (2018). Queer Fire: ecology, combustion and pyrosexual desire. Feminist review, 118(1), 7-24.
➩ The text can be found in the link.
🐌【READINGS (TO READ OUT LOUD AND LISTEN TO TOGETHER) 】
System of Conductors Collaboratory (feat. Lám-Nuā) invites participants to READ OUT LOUD AND LISTEN TO TOGETHER seminal texts related to feminist environmental humanities, to feel the flow of information, and to make a container for intimate (albeit public) enablements, through the process of listening to each others' voice, tone, and the reading environment.
In the first session, Renyu and Shih-yu will share their experience of translating, and organizing field trips, as well as problems they encountered during hosting the Bodies of Water reading group. This presentation is based on a previous presentation with Asian Feminist Studio for Art and Research (AFSAR) both online and onsite at a.p. Berlin on 10th March 2023.
🐌【lám-nuā】
Since October 2021, translator Renyu Wu and curator Shih-yu Hsu have been revising the Chinese version of Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology by Astrida Neimanis, which was first translated by Renyu and Google Translate during April to July while a big drought occurred in Taiwan earlier that year. A series of online study/reading sessions then grew organically along the process of translation. Many readers' ideas and feedback were infused into the Chinese translation texts, grounding the theory in Taiwan as islanders. Translating collectively unravels our previous preconception of what (why and how) to see, to feel, to sense and to care about the world.
IG: https://instagram.com/lam_nua
Linktr.ee: linktr.ee/lam_nua
HackMD: https://hackmd.io/@BOW/lamnua2023
💫【System of Conductors】
"Semiconductors" have revealed to us that the possibility of conduction does not lie in the essence of matter, but in the state of the material to which it belongs. "System of Conductors: More-than-Human Technical Studies for Transentient Becomings" is a collaborative project by four arts workers who endeavor to re-examine the significant role of conductor in theories of new-materialism.
From the molecular perspective, Jui-Lan YAO investigates the “mining” economy behind modern technology development, exploring the operational foundation of consumer electronics as well as the value systems behind. From the information perspective, curator Shi-Yu HSU and translator RenYu WU collaborate on the reading group “lám-nuā”. This Taiwanese term means soft and rotten, referring to the impedance of information transmission created by the mixture of earth and water. From the perspective of force, researcher Feng-Yi CHU digs into the relationship between planetary gravitational diffraction and mythological projection of human civilization.
"System of Conductors" leads participants to rethink the new-materialist epistemology related to conduction, relationships, value, and other aspects by entering different states of knowledge contexts through activities including "FEELed Walk", "lám-nuā reading", and "Cross-Dimensions broadcasting".
IG: https://www.instagram.com/systemofconductors/
Web Site on C-LAB: https://clab.org.tw/creators/2023_r202/