Re: [-empyre-] (no subject)

[Norie Neumark]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hello Tyler and everyone

What a great post, Tyler, and wonderful to hear about your work. Perhaps you 
know about the algae opera by Michael Burton and Michiko Nitta?  
(http://www.burtonnitta.co.uk/algaeopera.html) 
. I haven’t seen it myself but 
read about it and accessed it online and was enchanted. Again, apologies for 
being lazy (if this is really bad net etiquette, let me know!) as I just put in 
an excerpt about the work from my Voicetracks book:

Breath also connects us to the place through which it resonates 
and the others in that place and in the shared medium of air. It not only 
connects people,  intersubjectively, it 
also connects people to animals and things,  voicing the connections between 
breath and the natural environment. I listen to this in The Algae   
 Opera of artists BurtonNitta (Michael Burton and Michiko Nitta), for 
example, which literally breathes life into the natural environment, giving 
voice to the   relationship between human breath and 
plant life on our planet. In this work, it is an opera singer’s copious voiced 
breath that literally breathes life into algae.
Masked in a specially designed piece of biotechnology, an algae headdress, the 
opera singer, the algae, the audience and I (watching documentation) form a 
strange  relationship, a curious assemblage. The carbon 
dioxide in her breath feeds the algae, which later will be fed to the audience, 
so that they can literally “taste hersong.”  In The 
Algae Opera, the head mask, attached to tubing which channels the breath to an 
algae tank, is a strange mixture of a Greek mask, a persona,  and a 
beautiful lunglike filigree that looks like a seahorse. The singer feels part 
sea creature herself as she intones her algae opera. I listen to the voice as 
mediumhere, life-giving medium, medium for life. 
Meanwhile the other sense of medium merges into the undertones as, medium-like, 
the singer crosses an ether and  connects me to 
another life form. And when the audience eats the algae, I sense that that they 
are actually ingesting the singer’s voice. In an odd way, the work  
 makes me think about John Baldessari’s 1972 video of teaching 
a plant the alphabet. As far as I know (I wonder if anyone ever followed up 
with those plants?), that work was more humorous and 
conceptual than literal, in contrast to the literal relationships between plant 
life and voice that animate works made after the new 
materialist turn. And it is with new materialist ears that I encounter The 
Algae Opera as it provokes a listening to breath between the human and 
nonhuman— opening an awareness of the vibrancy of 
breath and the productiveness of its connections. It voices and breathes life 
into a sense of intersubjectivity beyond the  human.

 Speaking of Whitehead and fermentation and guts, your post set thinking about 
my amazing acupuncturist, Mattie Sempert, who is a Whitehead scholar (part of 
the Sense Lab in Montreal) and essayist as well as acupuncturist — she is 
writing a book of essays about the entanglement of all of these. Anyway, her 
“twirling fingers” as she feels my gut to sense where to needle are in-touch 
with the life that my gut tspeak to her – attuning her to what’s happening 
throughout my whole body(/mind). It’s an amazing collaboration and as the 
needles start to work, my stomach gurgles appreciation and joy.

best

Norie

www.out-of-sync.com 

workingworms.net 

unlikely.net.au 
 

> On 13 Oct 2017, at 5:19 AM, Tyler Fox  wrote:
> 
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hello everyone,
> 
> First, I also want to send my best wishes to April and Matt. I have
> friends and family in the same area, some who had to flee in the
> middle of the night with nothing more than pajamas and their cat
> (which, at least, is a thin silver lining). I am saddened for all,
> humans and nonhumans, dealing with such devastation.
> 
> I would like to thank Margaretha for inviting me as a guest to this
> week. Also thanks to everyone for the wonderful posts with much to
> consider (terroirism, affection, enlivenment, grieving and resistance
> thereof, turtles and other turtles, listening, learning, and
> communicating with nonhuman collaborators…the list goes on). Just.
> Wow.
> 
> As Margaretha’s introduction 

Re: [-empyre-] Introducing Week 2: Mediated Natures, Speculative Futures and Justice and thank you to Week One

[Norie Neumark]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Thanks for opening this vital can of worms, Julie. I was first alerted to these 
issues by vegan colleagues at an Animal Studies conference in Australia earlier 
this year. We were talking about new materialism, which for me has been so rich 
an opening for my thinking, and Fiona Rapsey Probyn asked the same sort of 
questions you raise about real material political and ethical concerns. I think 
the way you put it about “the real material lives of the animals they theorise” 
provides an acid test for new materialism and one that will be the key question 
I’ll put to theories now — thank you. Given that all thinkers have limitations, 
there are still important things that Haraway and Braidotti have to offer, I 
think -- though I certainly agree these are serious limitations to new 
materialism thinking when it cannot recognise the different pains suffered by 
things and by lab animals and food industry animals. I guess what I wonder is 
are these limitations inherent to new materialism or can it be ethically and 
politically attentive to the real material lives of animals.
best
Norie
www.out-of-sync.com 
https://workingworms.net 
http://unlikely.net.au 

> On 12 Oct 2017, at 6:11 am, Julie Andreyev  wrote
> 
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hi Meredith
> 
> Thank you for pointing out the Braidotti reference, and reminding us of her 
> concept of zoe. 
> 
> I’d like to open a bit of a worm-can so see if there is room for debate on 
> Braidotti’s, and Haraway’s thought on more-than-human animals. I do 
> appreciate the creative thought that both philosophers present on the 
> vitality of other animals, and our need to expand our thought and ethics. The 
> recent speculative fiction by Haraway is an example. However both theorists 
> fall short of extending their thought into applied practice that is 
> meaningful for the lives of other animals. In their writing they stick with a 
> utilitarian view on other animals, such as supporting work on animals in the 
> laboratory. They seem to have a fatalistic, or entrenched anthropocentric 
> view, that the lab and meat industry is a given, indisputable fact of 
> contemporary culture, and that this warrants the continued exploitive actions 
> of humans. For example, while Haraway talks about ‘companion species’ her 
> version of this category includes those animals utilized in labs and food 
> industry. How may a companion relationship be actualized in this hierarchical 
> and harmful, even lethal system? In an similarly un-problematized way, 
> Braidotti draws some equivalents between living beings, and those 
> computational intelligences produced by humans. I would argue that real live 
> animals are presented with more risk than computers.
> 
> My question about both Braidotti’s and Haraway’s thought is: What is at stake 
> for the real material lives of the animals they theorize? 
> 
> best
> 
> Julie
> 
>> On Oct 10, 2017, at 5:11 PM, Meredith Drum  wrote:
>> 
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Dear Empyre
>> 
>> I am writing in response to Benjamin’s post about animal research films, 
>> specifically the three rats films. I was pleased that Joyce Wieland’s ended 
>> the post. Hers is refreshing and funny -  a nice shift after the 
>> frustrating, humorless films by Miller and Mowrer. The difference between 
>> the albino lab rats, bred over many generations as science products, and the 
>> wild, brown rats (staring as political dissidents in Wieland’s piece) bring 
>> me to Rosi Braidotti’s use of the terms bios and zoe. The lab rats are 
>> clearly bios, animal life that has value within capitalism. While Wieland’s 
>> rebellious brown rats are part of zoe, which Braidotti champions as a vital, 
>> materialist and affirmative life-force, part of a post-anthropocentric 
>> shift. While Wieland is using her rats for allegory, celebrating resistance 
>> in humans not in rats, her film does point toward the positivity of zoe. 
>> 
>> Best,
>> Meredith
>> 
>> 
>>> On Oct 9, 2017, at 4:52 PM, Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa  
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>> First off: Thank you Margaretha for moderating such a fascinating 
>>> discussion! I’ve been really interested in what has been said so far, which 
>>> resonates with my own work in generative ways.
>>> 
>>> I thought I’d take the opportunity of being paired with such an exceptional 
>>> group of practitioners working in collaboration with nonhuman animals to 
>>> discuss my own research as a kind of alternate- or pre-history of such 
>>> work. I study the films produced in scientific contexts and am currently 
>>> focusing on the animal research films made by behavioral psychology 
>>> throughout the 20th 

Re: [-empyre-] Introducing Week 2: Mediated Natures, Speculative Futures and Justice and thank you to Week One

[Norie Neumark]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Julie 
Thank you for the links to your work. Your descriptions of the crows “quiet 
conversations” resonates for me and my approach to animals voices (that call 
out, more-than just sound). I love your work, The Crows splashing conversation 
is wonderful and I appreciated, too, how in the Wait piece you credit the dogs, 
Tom and Sugi, with “concept, acting”. I’m looking forward to spending more time 
with your work. Thinking about how we listen in and to the world, I’m very 
moved by the writings of anthropologist Tim Ingold with his concept of 
‘wayfaring' which attends to “the ground we walk, the ever-changing skies, 
mountains and rivers, rocks and trees, the houses we inhabit and the tools we 
use, not to mention the innumerable companions, both non-human animals and 
fellow humans, with which and with whom we share our lives. They are constantly 
inspiring us, challenging us, telling us things” (Being Alive: Essays on 
Movement, Knowledge, and Description. London: Routledge 2011)
best
Norie
www.out-of-sync.com <http://www.out-of-sync.com/>
https://workingworms.net/ <https://workingworms.net/>
http://unlikely.net.au/ <http://unlikely.net.au/>

> On 11 Oct 2017, at 11:40 AM, Julie Andreyev <jandr...@ecuad.ca> wrote:
> 
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hi Norie and soft-skins
> 
> thank you for introducing me to your writing and to Catherine Clover. Your 
> points remind us of the engrained speciesism of our culture that favors some 
> animals over others. I’m referring to those who are ‘used’ for food, research 
> labs, clothing, vs. those who are companions, and those who are regarded as 
> ‘beautiful’ vs those who are pests. When we take the time to listen and look 
> more thoroughly and mindfully, it becomes evident that those marginalized 
> animals are also someone’s father, mother, brother, sister, daughter. They 
> have communities and interests, cultures and traditions. The crows, and all 
> the birds around my home, remind me of this. It is an ongoing practice of, as 
> you say, unlearning and learning anew that must take place if we are to 
> improve relations with other animals.
> 
> We can bring in the practice of acoustic ecology into the mix in which we are 
> asked to listen, to the sonic ecology of a location, and to how human 
> listening and sound making are part of this collaborative biophony. Pauline 
> Oliveros, Hildegard Westerkamp and R. Murray Shafer come to mind. Westercamp 
> discusses listening as a way to join with our surroundings and to move away 
> from isolation and towards connection. Here is a podcast of her’s 
> http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/how-opening-our-ears-can-open-our-minds-hildegard-westerkamp-1.3962163
>  
> <http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/how-opening-our-ears-can-open-our-minds-hildegard-westerkamp-1.3962163>
> 
> This is where I was going with the method of indeterminacy, that is similar 
> to your unlearning and learning anew. It is a method first articulated by 
> Fluxus artists of the mid-twentieth century whereby instructions for 
> participatory art leave room for interpretation by participants, and thereby 
> generate indeterminate outcomes. I am transposing this method into 
> interspecies methods where, in my art processes with other animals, I tend to 
> set up situations and invite them to participate. The aim is to do this 
> without force. This involves respecting their right to refuse. Through 
> respectful invitations, expanded seeing-listening can be generated anew. 
> 
> The crow couple taught me how to play with pebbles, and they revealed to me 
> their quiet conversations between themselves. You can find a video from my 
> Bird Park here http://julieandreyev.com/ph-d-research/ 
> <http://julieandreyev.com/ph-d-research/> where the couple have a little 
> conversation about bathing. 
> 
> best
> 
> Julie
> 
> 
>> On Oct 10, 2017, at 3:01 PM, Norie Neumark <nor...@mac.com 
>> <mailto:nor...@mac.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Hi Julie,
>> The concern about working with animals collaboratively but not harmfully is 
>> so important for artists and it’s great to have this empyre discussion. In 
>> response to your work with a  free-living crow family, i’d like to tell you 
>> about a wonderful Australian artist who works with birds. Catherine Clover 
>> (http://ciclover.com/ <http://ciclover.com/>) works around listening and 
>> unlearning — unlearning the ways we listen to listen — and relate — anew. 
>> 
>> I’ve written about Cath's work (in Voicetracks: Attuning to Voice in Media 
>> and the Arts) because it was one of the

Re: [-empyre-] Introducing Week 2: Mediated Natures, Speculative Futures and Justice and thank you to Week One

[Norie Neumark]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Oh, I sent that too quickly. I should have mentioned another early video from 
Kathy High (you’re probably aware of her more recent work) — her Animal Films 
series, which includes  "Voices from the Other Side," a collaboration with 
Ernie Cat (who was in fact, the very cat I encountered in Domestic Vigilance in 
Everyday Problems of the Living ) — where she works  as a ‘facilitator’ and 
‘collaborator’ with animals. 
best
Norie
www.out-of-sync.com
https://workingworms.net/ <https://workingworms.net/>

> On 11 Oct 2017, at 9:01 AM, Norie Neumark <nor...@mac.com> wrote:
> 
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hi Julie,
> The concern about working with animals collaboratively but not harmfully is 
> so important for artists and it’s great to have this empyre discussion. In 
> response to your work with a  free-living crow family, i’d like to tell you 
> about a wonderful Australian artist who works with birds. Catherine Clover 
> (http://ciclover.com/ <http://ciclover.com/>) works around listening and 
> unlearning — unlearning the ways we listen to listen — and relate — anew. 
> 
> I’ve written about Cath's work (in Voicetracks: Attuning to Voice in Media 
> and the Arts) because it was one of the first works, along with Kathy High’s 
> enchanting Everyday Problems of the Living that really attuned me to the 
> possibilities and importance of the way artists collaborate with non-human 
> animals. I hope you don’t mind if I’m lazy here and just grab a bit from my 
> book:
> 
>   Catherine Clover has been making works for and with noisy, wild urban 
> birds for many years—listening, recording, translating, transcribing, reading
>   to them, performing for and with and after them, making books and  
> performances and installations. Like some of the scientists that Vinciane
>   Despret discussed (2004, 2013a and b), Clover seeks artistic practices 
> and ways to develop relationships of attunement with the birds. Her choice of
>   urban gulls and pigeons is deliberately not sentimental; instead of 
> ‘beautiful’ and mellifluous or even sublime birds, calling to us from the 
> ‘wild,’ she
>   works in a sort of minor mode (Ngai 2007; see also Manning 2016) with 
> despised and everyday species. These are birds with whom we share urban
>   space but often without noticing them, unless to bemoan their presence. 
> These are birds whose groupings we name as deadly and dirty—a murder of
>   crows, a filth of starlings, as the title of one of Clover’s works 
> reminds me (Clover 2012). Clover’s practice is multidisciplinary, working 
> with voice, sound, language,
>   visual art, installation, performance, and public art. Besides her 
> experiments with voice, she also works visually in a range of creative ways,
>   from the texts themselves, to overhead projections, to signage. 
> Clover’s mode is collaborative—with human performers and with avian 
> collaborators.
>   Her human collaborators perform and improvise the written word, which 
> includes her own translations and transcriptions of birds’ voices. Her
>   oeuvre is a tribute to the importance of learning anew, learning new 
> habits of listening and voice in interspecies relations—bringing new 
> understandings,
>   and practices of listening and voice—folding this listening back upon 
> itself through the field recordings and transcriptions and translations and
>   performances. Inspired particularly by Salomé Voegelin, Clover works 
> with listening as a way of becoming aware of “sharing space” and intertwining
>   lives and voices in urban spaces—becoming aware of what we have in 
> common with cohabitants in urban contexts. As Clover says of her work, her
>   concern is to “unlearn” her old ways of listening in order to hear the 
> birds’ calls “not as pleasant musical sounds, nor even as the sound of a 
> species,
>   but as distinct communication between individuals living their lives 
> inclose proximity to mine” (Clover 2015b, 33).
> 
> Check out her work on her website — no birds suffer in the making of her work!
> best
> Norie
> 
>> On 11 Oct 2017, at 4:28 AM, Julie Andreyev <jandr...@ecuad.ca 
>> <mailto:jandr...@ecuad.ca>> wrote:
>> 
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Hi Margaretha, Meredith and -empyre- soft skinned space,
>> 
>> Thank you for inviting me as a Discussant for this week’s topics. I am 
>> responding to Margaretha’s question in the introduction about justice in 
>> encounters with more-than-human others. I’d like to enter here, by pointing 
>> broadly to the challenges and pote

Re: [-empyre-] Introducing Week 2: Mediated Natures, Speculative Futures and Justice and thank you to Week One

[Norie Neumark]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Julie,
The concern about working with animals collaboratively but not harmfully is so 
important for artists and it’s great to have this empyre discussion. In 
response to your work with a  free-living crow family, i’d like to tell you 
about a wonderful Australian artist who works with birds. Catherine Clover 
(http://ciclover.com/ ) works around listening and 
unlearning — unlearning the ways we listen to listen — and relate — anew. 

I’ve written about Cath's work (in Voicetracks: Attuning to Voice in Media and 
the Arts) because it was one of the first works, along with Kathy High’s 
enchanting Everyday Problems of the Living that really attuned me to the 
possibilities and importance of the way artists collaborate with non-human 
animals. I hope you don’t mind if I’m lazy here and just grab a bit from my 
book:

Catherine Clover has been making works for and with noisy, wild urban 
birds for many years—listening, recording, translating, transcribing, reading
to them, performing for and with and after them, making books and  
performances and installations. Like some of the scientists that Vinciane
Despret discussed (2004, 2013a and b), Clover seeks artistic practices 
and ways to develop relationships of attunement with the birds. Her choice of
urban gulls and pigeons is deliberately not sentimental; instead of 
‘beautiful’ and mellifluous or even sublime birds, calling to us from the 
‘wild,’ she
works in a sort of minor mode (Ngai 2007; see also Manning 2016) with 
despised and everyday species. These are birds with whom we share urban
space but often without noticing them, unless to bemoan their presence. 
These are birds whose groupings we name as deadly and dirty—a murder of
crows, a filth of starlings, as the title of one of Clover’s works 
reminds me (Clover 2012). Clover’s practice is multidisciplinary, working with 
voice, sound, language,
visual art, installation, performance, and public art. Besides her 
experiments with voice, she also works visually in a range of creative ways,
from the texts themselves, to overhead projections, to signage. 
Clover’s mode is collaborative—with human performers and with avian 
collaborators.
Her human collaborators perform and improvise the written word, which 
includes her own translations and transcriptions of birds’ voices. Her
oeuvre is a tribute to the importance of learning anew, learning new 
habits of listening and voice in interspecies relations—bringing new 
understandings,
and practices of listening and voice—folding this listening back upon 
itself through the field recordings and transcriptions and translations and
performances. Inspired particularly by Salomé Voegelin, Clover works 
with listening as a way of becoming aware of “sharing space” and intertwining
lives and voices in urban spaces—becoming aware of what we have in 
common with cohabitants in urban contexts. As Clover says of her work, her
concern is to “unlearn” her old ways of listening in order to hear the 
birds’ calls “not as pleasant musical sounds, nor even as the sound of a 
species,
but as distinct communication between individuals living their lives 
inclose proximity to mine” (Clover 2015b, 33).

Check out her work on her website — no birds suffer in the making of her work!
best
Norie

> On 11 Oct 2017, at 4:28 AM, Julie Andreyev  wrote:
> 
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hi Margaretha, Meredith and -empyre- soft skinned space,
> 
> Thank you for inviting me as a Discussant for this week’s topics. I am 
> responding to Margaretha’s question in the introduction about justice in 
> encounters with more-than-human others. I’d like to enter here, by pointing 
> broadly to the challenges and potentials offered by encounters with other 
> animals. Ben, in his response to the topic brought up the history of 
> exploitive relations with other animals and the problems these produced for 
> the animals involved, and for the degradation of human empathy. The 
> utilization of other beings for the benefit of humans even finds itself into 
> art practices, such as with some bioart and art involving other animals in 
> gallery settings. Artist working within these genres continue to employ 
> harmful and even lethal methods, generally holding an anthropocentric view on 
> animals, plants and microbes as living materials; these artists arguing for 
> freedom of expression.
> 
> This is the starting point for my own art research and practice that asks, 
> how to generate post-anthropocentric aesthetics, as discourse and applied 
> methods, that model respectful empathetic forms of relating with other 
> creatures and the ecologies we share? The methods I am particularly drawn to 
> for their empathetic potential are interspecies 

Re: [-empyre-] Beginning Week 1: Radical Aesthetics, EcoAesthetic Systems and Entanglements

[Norie Neumark]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Thanks, Randall. Your posts are always so enlivening! I, too, respond to 
entanglement as a rich, moist way to think about our co-composing composting 
collaborations. Now that you’ve lured us into the en-space, I wonder what you 
think of Jane Bennett’s enchantment —  “a state of openness to the 
disturbing-captivating elements in everyday experience … a window onto the 
virtual secreted within the actual”  I’m attracted to how enchantment speaks to 
ethics for her: “Without modes of enchantment, we might not have the energy and 
inspiration to enact ecological projects, or to contest ugly and unjust modes 
of commercialization, or to respond generously to humans and nonhumans that 
challenge our settled identities.”Bennett, Jane. 2001. The Enchantment of 
Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings and Ethics. Princeton: Princeton University 
Press.

norie


> On 9 Oct 2017, at 10:46 AM, margaretha haughwout 
>  wrote:
> 
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hi Randall,
> 
> Firstly thank you so much for taking on each aspect of this week's title and 
> thinking it through! I agree with you about the weakness of 
> nodes/networks/connections -- and systems language generally  -- to describe 
> the relationships at play in ecoaesthetics/ across difference and the power 
> of terms like entanglement and enlivenment... I also wonder if these terms 
> are ever at odds though (more on this as a separate post).
> 
> What I love about your terms terroirism and ecoaesthetic systems is that they 
> are not mere metaphors for arts practice; they are requirements for social 
> practice to extend into a space of, as you say, resiliency and regeneration. 
> I also love that you start with soil. In fact, it is so appropriate that all 
> of our discussants have focused on it in one way or another; it all starts 
> (and ends) with soil. As everyone has pointed out, healthy soil food webs are 
> critical for healthy ecologies/ nutritious food. You point to a (downward) 
> direction for artists to begin to actually root and regenerate natureculture.
> 
> My last question is since most art practices end up serving and/or mirroring 
> capital, and I wonder (I am wondering this often -- it will be revisted in 
> week 3) if you see ways that this might be true for ecoaesthetic systems, or 
> if there is something fundamentally different and resistive about these sets 
> of practices that make them immune to cooptation?
> 
> In kindness and gratitiude,
> -M
> 
> 
> --
> beforebefore.net 
> guerrillagrafters.org 
> coastalreadinggroup.com 
> --
> 
> 
> 
> On Sat, Oct 7, 2017 at 10:18 AM, Randall Szott  > wrote:
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> I want to thank William and Norie for their thoughts and my fellow 
> conversants for theirs as well. William - I read the article you suggested 
> and it does resonate for me in many ways. One thing I will point out though, 
> is that "sustainability" is not enough. The model of "sustainable" has been 
> increasingly displaced in agricultural circles by "regenerative." Given the 
> amount of damage being done in various domains (including the linguistic - 
> thank you!), we need to do more than sustain, we must regenerate (heal, 
> repair, improve).
> 
> ENTANGLEMENTS:
> 
> A last thought for the last part of the week's title. I find entanglement a 
> powerful descriptive metaphor in describing systemic relationships, much more 
> so than network/connection/node metaphors. However, I want to throw another 
> term into the mix, one of a slightly larger descriptive frame - ENLIVENMENT. 
> This concept comes from a feeling percolating for years that I couldn't quite 
> name, it hovered near readings on pantheism, ecopsychology, and Kathleen Dean 
> Moore's "Holdfast" or  David Abram's "Spell of the Sensuous" among others. 
> Finally, I stumbled across  Andreas Weber's "Enlivenment" and the feeling had 
> finally manifest in words, words which then coalesced into a framework that 
> has shifted my thinking/feeling substantially. The essay is full of magic 
> incantations - worldmaking, householding, poetic objectivity, empirical 
> subjectivity, and the call to shift from the values of the Enlightenment 
> (which Weber describes as an ideology of death) to Enlivenment. Briefly, he 
> characterizes it this way:
> 
> "...a new stage of cultural evolution that can safeguard our scientific (and 
> democratic) ideals of common access to knowledge and the powers connected 
> with it – while at the same time validating personal experience that is felt 
> and subjective: the defining essence of embodied experience. The Enlivenment 
> that I envision includes other animate beings, which, after all, share the 
> 

Re: [-empyre-] From Randall

[Norie Neumark]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi all,
This month is so rich and exciting, I’m not sure where to begin. Randall’s post 
is so fruitful in so many ways — terroirism is such a wonderful concept and 
important for freeing us from neoliberalism art-making.  The emphasis on the 
local, the soil, feeling obligations to the earth resonated with a work that 
Maria Miranda and i are doing with our worms — Waiting. We came to it both from 
the joy of having a back yard and compost bins (after years of living in 
appartments) and thinking about how, as artists, to work with animals in ways 
that could be a collaboration rather than instrumental use. We were delighted, 
too, that our worms love the same things as us — lots of vegetables and (too 
much) coffee. What we found that was really interesting, too, was that when 
when we set up a new worm cafe  we had to attune to their rhythms — they 
couldn’t be rushed, we just had to wait til they were ready to come out from 
under the blanket and start working their way through our food. Composting 
(yes, Donna Haraway), co-composing (yes Erin Manning), attuning (yes Vinciance 
Despret), waiting (yes, WORMS!) We’ve been thinking about the work as it goes 
along in our blog https://workingworms.net/ <https://workingworms.net/> 
Really looking forward to the rest of this month… such rich soil for thinking 
and for work
Norie Neumark

www.out-of-sync.com


> On 4 Oct 2017, at 11:31 pm, margaretha haughwout 
> <margaretha.anne.haughw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hi all,
> 
> I am posting this for Randall, while we try and sort why his emails aren't 
> coming through:
> 
> 
> Hello all. I am looking forward to speaking with, and alongside, everyone. I 
> hope to think a bit about each of the separate concepts in this week's title: 
> Radical Aesthetics, EcoAesthetic Systems and Entanglements. This message will 
> focus on the first concept with the other concepts to follow unless the 
> conversation takes us elsewhere!
> 
> 
> RADICAL AESTHETICS: 
> Radical is not a word I have much to do with, except in its Latinate origin 
> (having roots). So, I take it quite literally when asked to think about 
> radical aesthetics. But it might better capture my sense of things to say 
> "radicle aesthetics." In contemporary art, what passes for "radical" is too 
> often built on sand, not soil and thus is not amenable to truly radical 
> (radicle) life. 
> 
> In introducing me, Margaretha mentioned another particular word usage that I 
> have found useful - terroir. That is a term many of you may recognize from 
> wine making, which refers to the total environmental influence on multiple 
> facets of a wine's characteristics. I take up the term as a political stance, 
> as a terroirist. In the Capitalocene, I would argue that to embrace locality 
> and to reject the cosmopolitan art system (or the broader global habitus for 
> meaning making) makes one subject to accusations that make such a term 
> resonate with its obvious (near) homophone. I would further argue that just 
> as we live in specific watersheds, and foodsheds, we also live in specific 
> noösheds. This fact, necessitates a radicle (radical) re-thinking of 
> aesthetics.
> 
> Thus, Liberalism’s (or "art making wholly tied to neoliberalism" as mentioned 
> in the intro) obsession with institutionalizing, economizing, and 
> professionalizing every sphere of human endeavor leaves us out of love’s 
> reach. We need human scale, affectionate practices that generate enchantment, 
> and numinous experience.The liberal project is a dead end (or Entzauberung).
> 
> Ronald Osborn (quoting Wendell Berry):
> “Our politics and science have never mastered the fact that people need more 
> than to **understand** their obligation to one another and the earth; they 
> need also the **feeling** of such obligation, and the feeling can come only 
> within the patterns of familiarity.”
> 
> The affection and skill necessary to prevent the depletion of top-soil, for 
> example, only arises through intimate knowledge of and devotion to a concrete 
> locality and its supporting natural and human relationships. There simply are 
> no technical or global solutions to the crisis of soil loss brought on by 
> extractive chemical and machine-based farming methods. What are needed are 
> cultural solutions that take diverse local forms and emerge as a deeply 
> rooted and affectionate responsiveness to place.
> 
> “When one works beyond the reach of one’s love for the place one is working 
> in and for the things and creatures one is working with and among, then 
> destruction inevitably results,” Berry writes. “An adequate local culture, 
> a

Re: [-empyre-] subscribers post bios until Wednesday

[Norie Neumark]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hello Empyre and Empryians,
Long time no write… but I do lurk and  enjoy reading the stimulating posts.

Thank you Renate for the extension of the deadline for introductions,  I seem 
to hover a bit too often these days in that space of extended deadlines… Here’s 
my catch up over the last few years, by way of introduction.

I’m inspired to write by seeing the post from Christian Ulrik Andersen from 
Aarhus University, which brought back  memories of my recent (well 2 years ago 
now!) guest professorship there, when I met him and Soren Pold and Geoff Cox 
and so many other great artists/researchers. (I was invited there by Ansa 
Lonstrop to work on my project on voice and new materialism). I have to say 
it’s a long time since I’ve gotten up each day to go to work with such a sense 
of joy as I did in Aarhus. And the conversations there were inspiring for my 
work. So hej Christian, and any other Aarhus Empryians and lurkers…

That project has become a book that I am writing for MIT Press, Voicetracks: 
Voice and media and media art in the post humanist turn — hopefully to be out 
later this year or early next. Other work on the project has been book chapters 
and journal articles. One chapter is in Konstantin Thomaidis and Ben 
Macpherson’s, Voice Studies — where it was good to see a chapter by Nina Sun 
Eidsheim, whom I met at a residency, at Cornell (hey there snow-loving 
Ithacans!) at the Society for the Humanities. The journal article is in Journal 
of Sonic Studies 10 http://sonicstudies.org/jss10 
<http://sonicstudies.org/jss10>

I’ve been keeping up my art practice with collaborator Maria Miranda 
(www.out-of-sync.com <http://www.out-of-sync.com/>). We got obsessed with 
pollution and coal after a residency in Beijing and came home and made the work 
Coalface, installation and tumblr blog http://coalfaces.tumblr.com/ 
<http://coalfaces.tumblr.com/>. More recently we’ve been doing work provoked by 
the cruelties of redundancy — exploring the aesthetics of neolliberalism. We 
had an exhibition in Sydney last year and one coming up in Melbourne this year. 
Videos in the project are Shredded: Stuplimity and the Aesthetics of 
Neo-Liberalism https://vimeo.com/126581615 <https://vimeo.com/126581615> and 
You will go Quietly  https://vimeo.com/111494446 <https://vimeo.com/111494446>. 
Making the project to get over my sense of being thrown away by redundancy, we 
were helped by the Three Stooges, well, two of them did, Curly was made 
redundant, and Sianne Ngai (Ugly Feelings). We’ve done a bit of radiophonic 
work too — radio is my first and still dearest love. The work was  Spacejunk 
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/360/space-junk/4496330 
<http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/360/space-junk/4496330> (We were 
obsessed with Space Junk for a few years, and made a video too 
https://vimeo.com/48430885 <https://vimeo.com/48430885>)

I’m now happily located at Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) at the 
University of Melbourne. VCA is now hosting (along with LaTrobe University) the 
media rich and peer-reviewed Unlikely: Journal for Creative Arts,  of which I 
am founding editor. http://unlikely.net.au/ <http://unlikely.net.au/>  Check 
out the first issue, Feral. There are lots of exciting projects coming up 
through Unlikely, including this year’s issue on Fieldworks, guest edited by 
Lucas Ihlein and Brogan Bunt, out of the University of Wollongong. We also are 
launching a whole new e-publication stream with downloadable e-books and media 
art projects— all coordinated by Jan Brueggemeier (j...@neture.org 
<mailto:j...@neture.org>). The first e-publication will be the proceedings 
(peer reviewed) from a conference, Restructure. Check out the Unlikely website, 
it’ll be out soon! Also there will be calls for proposals for guest edited 
editions and for contributions to the third issue, Seed Banks: Creative 
Ecological Investigations & Critical Plant Studies (working title)

I’ve gone on bit long here so I’ll let my bio and the Out-of-Sync bio do the 
rest of the talking, it’s nice to be out in the open again after a few years of 
lurking!

best
Norie
Bio: Norie Neumark is a sound/media artist and theorist.  Her sound studies 
research is currently focused on voice and the new materialist turn. Her 
writing on voice includes Voice: Vocal Aesthetics in Digital Arts and Media, 
(MIT Press, 2010), lead editor and contributor, and an upcoming monograph, 
Voicetracks – voice, media, and media arts in the posthumanist turn, under 
contract to MIT Press for 2016. Her collaborative art practice with Maria 
Miranda  has been commissioned and exhibited nationally and internationally. 
She is an Honorary Professorial Fellow at VCA and Emeritus Professor, La Trobe 
University, Melbourne, and the founding editor of Unlikely: Journal for 
Creative Arts. http://unlikely.net.au <ht