[-empyre-] AnthropoDecentering and the Hack of the Human Germline
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Last of Four on Designer Baby ethics and aesthetics Looking forward to hearing the wrap up week. The two biopolitical animal studies letters I posted above are meant to contrast the very anthropocentric issues of the FDA GM babies post above them. I don¹t know if elite, DIY or corporate mass produced transhumans count as human, super human, subhuman, post human, nextwave golemic or a-humanist mugwump jismatics but we are all always animal already. I wonder if the ethics of wetlab involvement in gore ethics of the Letter to Alba and the livestock aesthetics of well bred Cloned Animal meat might help mete out the home on the wide range that the diversity collage shuffle\d into this millenium? In any case, you can read into the issues of Human IGM between the blinds¹ of the animal model concepts in the two letters. Adam ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Animal Interlude, Letter to Alba Guestbook, 2001
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Eduardo As you know... I support you and Alba. May you find togetherness!(Pending FDA/EPA approval.) I have no problem with the techniques of transgenes being used for art production purposes. I do have an objection to the concept of this being a Harmless Art. Why pretend that? The inserted gene is claimed to be harmless to Alba as an organism. This is an industry claim that I seriously doubt. But, if the art of GFP Bunny is not Alba in Herself but instead 'comprises her creation' including the techniques of Insertational Mutagenesis and you still want to claim that 'no harm was done' then lets take a closer look at the Protocols for a Transgenic Rabbit· They call for hormone treatments both for hyper-ovulation of the egg supplying (donor) rabbit -- mom(1) and hormone treatments for the psuedo-pregnant state of the surrogate 'uterus' donor -- mom(2) and surgery on both sides to collect the fertilized embryos from the fallopian tubes of mom(1) rabbit and to implant the GFP positive embryos into the surrogate uterus of the mom(2) rabbit. This says nothing of the throwing away of the biohazardous leftover¹ embryos that didn't take the transgene properly. As a part of the process, We also have to take into account the unnamed or numbered Brothers and Sisters of Alba who were possibly still born or born with abnormalities due to the viral infection vectors, cytoplasmic bacterial infection, bad laparascopic technique, or other natural causes. How many embryos were implanted? >From which rabbit? Into which rabbit? How many lived? How many were tossed? Where are Alba's moms? Could you have done this procedure, proudly, with your own hands? Let me be clear. I remind you that I support your actions, morally and artistically. I believe that Transgenic Art, both the products and the processes, are valid as an art forms a nd as much needed commentaries on an industry of post/species-boundarybreeding technology. Unnecessary surgery, Aesthetic breeding, Even embryonic gene-play should and has be done by curious artists wielding their own scalpels. But it does us all an injustice to white wash (or green glowwash) a bloody and meaty process. No art that uses the knife (even a knife for hire) should claim that it is harmless. That is a grotesque affront. Could you to be a little more transparent or forthcoming When you review the modern breeding procedures That went into the formation of Alba? They surely did cause some harm. Signing out until next time, A difficult fan, Adam Zaretsky Research Affiliate, MFA Arnold Demain Fermentation and Industrial Microbiology Laboratory Department of Biology Massachusetts Institute of Technology 68-223 Cambridge MA 02139 PS: I hope the next trangenic mammalian art piece is better documented. I mean the glowing birth of a GFP Mammal will be a gorgeous event to capture on Digital Video! Woodstock, NY USA - Tuesday, July 17, 2001 at 11:02:46 (PDT) http://www.ekac.org/bunnybook.2001.html ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Does Cloned Animal Safety take into account the effect of Aesthetics on the long-term Ecological effects of Food Chain Design?, Eye of the Storm, Arts Catalyst, Tate Museum, London UK, 2009
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Adam Zaretsky Submitted a Response to the United States Food and Drug Administration call for comments on the Use of Edible Products from Animal Clones or their Progeny for Human Food or Animal Feed as follows: http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dockets/03n0573/03N-0573-EC370-Attach-1.pdf SubbDocket Number & Title: 2003N-0573 - Draft Animal Cloning Risk Assessment; Proposed Risk Management Plan; Draft Guidance for Industry; Availability Summary: Availability of, and request for comment on, Animal Cloning: A Draft Risk Assessment (to evaluate the health risks to animals involved in the process of cloning and to evaluate the food consumption risks that may result from edible products derived from animal clones or their progeny); draft Animal Cloning: Risk Management Plan for Clones and their Progeny; and draft GFI #179: Use of Edible Products from Animal Clones or their Progeny for Human Food or Animal Feed Does Cloned Animal Safety take into account the effect of Aesthetics on the long-term Ecological effects of Food Chain Design? We should not be overly worried about somatic cell nuclear transfer as a Food Science edible technique. The abnormalities that can be expected might be delicious. Our worries stem from the fact that a large percentage of breeders may not have had the Art Historical schooling that most Academic students of Aesthetics might have had. Right now, the only type of taste¹ we can see embedded in cloned livestock is based on ramping up meat production and maybe designing and cloning industrial beings born with zero percent transfat. If we are spending millions of taxpayer dollars on making copies of sires whose profitability is based on 4-H tropes of beauty alone, then we are missing much of what contemporary art can lend to contemporary breeding of gastronomic novelty. How do we decide what is worth engineering for? In particular, Livestock can be designed along a wide variety of Aesthetic gene expressions. Considering the range of gene expressions possible in a collage of multiple genomic palletes, economic efficiency is neither a simple concept nor our only deciding force. Beyond public acceptance of the technology, there is also public trend diversity, novelty markets and niche power to be brokered in this global competition for more unusual food. We need to explore the entire range of clonables and widen the variety pool to include gourmet, abject and non-utilitarian breeding projects. Practitioners or Historians of Futurism, Surrealism, Abstraction, Minimalism and other Contemporary art movements may all have their own special cow, pig or chicken clone advisory role to play. Consider what a gifted cubist could bring to the table. What are the cultural aesthetics of our ecological future? The decision to design livestock along a plurality of aesthetic lineages may have an impact on the future of ecology and diversity of our planet. As competitively designed meat factories take up more and more of the terrestrial grazing land, we have come to understand that we live on a planet dominated by humans and their domestic familiars. Designed and cloned livestock are limited editions but they can reproduce independently. The industry animals may be foreign species brought forth from technological sites but are they beautiful enough for us to want to live with them for generations to come. Sometimes real-time back fat is not enough. There is an economy of aesthetics, which will drive the ecological affect of our engineered future. What can an understanding of the arts bring to livestock design? The history of art may finally come to some use for humanity through agricultural and other replicant applications. The aesthetic hazards of breeding without a proper understanding of Western Culture and our shared artistic heritage must be taken into account.. The arts represent a great asset for livestock design and a great way to insure that the future isn¹t born looking dull, retrograde and a bit too sketchy. Without a firm grasp of Art History, our cloned food may not represent our national and international goals as U.S. food producers and consumers. The admixture of global variety through genetic engineering and the cloning of spectacular hereditary cascades should only be approved through an aesthetic advisory commission made up of artists, art historians and aesthetics specialists. The future of style and the avoidance of our populous eating any aesthetic hazards depends on collaboration between new reproductive biotechnology and the Arts. I hope these issues will be taken into account as we sculpt new life from the media of biotechnology. Adam Zaretsky Link: http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dockets/03n0573/03N-0573-EC370-Attach-1.pdf ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] FDA to hold first public hearing on GM babies
--empyre- soft-skinned space--In one month is the public hearing on ³oocyte modification², often referred to as three parent babies, carrying a genetic modification through nuclear transfer of an ovum nucleus into a surrogate egg, to replace defective mitochondria with healthy egg white of another¹s enucleated donated egg/ovum. This is both human cloning and a limited form of IGM (Inheritable Genetic Modification of the human genome.) It is a test to see how the FDA will ok future coordinated or wild west farming of rare post-humans. It could be thought of as mitochondrial transplant... But it shows how to mass produce designer babies and it is up for review. Pitting raw research against consumer rights and industrial interests, the heath of the unborn, read as curing infertility, may be the key to open the door to regulatory approval: ³In re-opening the allowance for GM babies, whose genetic changes will be passed on to future generations, the FDA is taking the next steps toward toeing the line on genetic human enhancement.² --http://www.activistpost.com/2013/09/fda-to-hold-first-public-hearing-on-gm .html One question is, since our genome is regulated by the FDA, instead of the EPA (even though this is a global ecological diaspora) So our transhumans a food or a drug? Office of Cellular Tissue and Gene Therapies Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) FDA. October 22-23, 2013 - http://www.fda.gov/AdvisoryCommittees/Calendar/ucm361972.htm This is where the biopolitical debate inserts itself, on the liminal edge of the actual¹. We are talking about Deleuze¹s Spinoza while actually redesigning what a body can do, how to harness being, othering the isness of the ofness. And, if we want an affirmative overcoming without the work of the negative that Foucault implies, how is health, consumerism, industry and federal rubber-stamp oversight going to bring us overmenching into the lines of flight that free range ideation can provide? Can I actually ask how our flora of philosophy will do anything beyond offer an extra esoteric foil for new eugenics? Elimination of the flawed, erasure of the differences, enhancing¹ away disability (differently abled), is affirmation a cure in this context? Getting rid of those invented mad, the dis-eased, those without social etiquette (spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, etc.)... We wouldn¹t have our Nietzsches, our Kafkas, our Mansons, our Edisons. I work to make a clinic of GenMod defect accentuation. Biopolitically this does not fit the regulatory structure being developed. Society is still the hole we dig. Options: http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/02/06/mutate-or-die-a-w-s-burroughs-biotechnol ogical-bestiary/ For Comment: Cellular & Gene Therapy Guidance Documents http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInform ation/Guidances/CellularandGeneTherapy/default.htm Draft Guidance for Industry: Considerations for the Design of Early-Phase Clinical Trials of Cellular and Gene Therapy Products (PDF - 124KB) http://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/GuidanceComplianceRegula toryInformation/Guidances/CellularandGeneTherapy/UCM359073.pdf 7/2013. (This guidance document is for comment purposes only.) Public Participation Information Interested persons may present data information or views orally or in writing on issues pending before the committee. Written submissions may be made to the contact person on or before October 15 2013. Oral presentations from the public can be applied for. The link for the webcast is available at: https://collaboration.fda.gov/ctgtac1013/ The team to be aware of now is Shoukhrat Mitalipov and his research team at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) as well as the Boston-based company called Ovascience, but this has been going on since the early 1990s particularly in hospitals that did not receive any federal funding (i.e. Masonic Hospitals and corporate human trials), in Korea, in Sweden and in New York City (Cornell Extension). ³If the FDA gives the OHSU researchers a green light to move towards human clinical trials, it will be the first instance of regulatory approval for human germline modification ever, anywhere in the world.² - http://www.biopoliticaltimes.org/article.php?id=7150 Can I ask our small group for a concerted response to the actual technology of the body being amassed on the border of our genomic commons? ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Living Experiments
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Ethics and Aesthetics Relations in terms of Genetically Modified Human biopolitics The formal judgment of production scores for newborn chicks in the linked PDF (below) might have some play here... If applied to human flesh based art derivatives Lets try and figure out which is more oppressive the relativistic ethical dimensions of aesthetic based biopolitical actions or the aesthetic (emo) basis behind the formation of biopolitical ethics based decisiveness . itp.nyu.edu/classes/germline-spring2013/files/2013/01/Judging-Poultry-for-Pr oduction.pdf THE 4-HS Head, Heart, Hands, and Health are the four Hs in 4-H, and they are the four values members work on through fun and engaging programs. Head - Managing, Thinking Heart - Relating, Caring Hands - Giving, Working Health - Being, Living THE 4-H PLEDGE I pledge my head to clearer thinking, My heart to greater loyalty, My hands to larger service, and my health to better living, for my club, my community, my country, and my world. Starting a county Genetically Modified Human show Keeping GM Humans has become more popular in both the rural and urban areas. Because of their novelty, IGM transgen humans make an excellent animal for a 4-H or FFA animal project. Those youth raising next-humans want a place to show off their project. If your county does not have a post-integrity HGProduct show, consider adding one, as a stand alone show or as part of the county fair. Jesse Lyons will be discussing what is involved in starting a new genus Homo show. Mr. Lyons is an Extension Associate at the University of Missouri specializing in New Reproductive Technology and Fertility Aesthetics. He is also an FDA certified H+ judge. https://learn.extension.org/events/972 ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Living Experiments
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hacking the Human Genome Lets take a moment to think about the changes in relationships between ethics and aesthetics in terms of inborn (bred) cultural design of the human form, consciousness, duration and sensual range. I mean, as we find ourselves in a new reproductive technology crisis, future human children are becoming design issues. Is it just another kind of pollution? Just Another Kind of Pollution In human culture, IGM has had its precursors. The laws of sexual attraction have always been bent by the pollution of arranged marriages. The cancer maps of environmental toxicology reveal other sources of genetic pollution, the errors we have created in the name of industrial metabolic devolution, toxic waste (for instance BPE, DDT, cesium-137, etc.) There are also forces of mutagenesis geologically and astrobiologically present in our ecosphere. Without our influence, organic and so-called natural disasters have influenced anatomy through flexible fitness regimes: cosmic radiation fluctuations, tannins in the water, belladonna. The beauty of our felt form is the result of all sorts of environmental hardship. The rate of rate of rate of rate of change does change and the shape of living things to come do alter to fit. The question of pollution reshaping human genealogical integrity is therefore situational to say the least. It is perhaps still wild. IGM: Tailored Wilding Intentional Inheritable Genetic Modification of the Human Genome (IGM) is the making of transgenic humans. The ethical dimensions are faceted: who decides, which traits, towards what imagined end, who is born, how true to type, who judges, who births, what is the architecture or cultural form appropriate to the transgen-posthuman and finally, what are the aesthetics of the new, laterally engineered types? Bioart as the Doing-Of Key Technologies IGM Key Technologies Targets Human gene insertion potential sites on the human body are: 1. The whole somatic body of women and men (including germ cells) 2. Targeted ovaries and testicles 3. In vitro or in situ sperm and ovum 4. Post fusion zygote or blastula 5. Human Embryonic Stem cells (HESc), isolated lines in tissue culture 6. Developing human embryos and/or embroid bodies (preimplantation embryos) 7. Primordial germ cells (presperm or pre-eggs also known as spermatogonia and oogonia.) IGM Key methods: 1. Minimally invasive germcell access: physical (often surgical) getting to potential sites 2. Which genes to pick and why: a taxonomy of all possible traits in the life world 3. Transcript for alterity: designing vectors and cassettes for trans gene infection of the human genome 4. Methods of transport: getting the infectious construct (plasmid or raw DNA) into the germline nuclei, i.e. 1) genegun, 2) microinjector, 3) plasmids 4) electroporators, 5) agrobacteria and 6) lipofection. 5. Inbreeding kindred: methods of stabilizing a human novel transgenic line IGM spaces of interest: 1. Divisions of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility 2. Departments of Obstetrics & Gynecology 3. IVF/fertility clinics 4. Hospital based gene therapy trials 5. Transgenic animal production 6. Abortion clinics family planning 7. Surrogate mother agencies 8. Sperm donor agencies 9. Medical waste embryo disposal or medical research reuse containers 10. International Space Station (ISS), HESc in orbit research ongoing The challenge, to an artist non-expert, is to take a hands-on approach to the mechanisms of new reproductive devices and practice inventive methods of genetic alteration. The research includes continued analysis of the burgeoning technology¹s potential effect on future, posthuman concepts of race, class, gender, disability and sensuality. But the artistic process here is based on materials, methods and time based, new media sculptural results that have agency and volition beyond the technique used to mold them. Bioart experiments on the bench are based on the doing-of key technologies while allowing for a feeling-with the post alteration being as a post-person familiar. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Redistributing the material world¹s diverse accents
--empyre- soft-skinned space--This is a response to Chris Robbins:
I am answering a request for more definitive notion of "art goals."¹ Beyond
what I had said about bioart offering a "reading of science and art in the
difficult land of luxurious, useless, process based, conceptual, secular
catechism." This former listing of art goals¹ is naïve modernism
described. I think we are still there in the arts and the sciences,
perpetuating the myth of the Avant Garde or as Laibach and NSK calls it: the
Retro Garde.
http://www.artmargins.com/index.php/archive/258-synthesis-retro-avant-garde-
or-mapping-post-socialism-in-ex-yugoslavia-
http://www.reanimator.8m.com/NSK/zizek.html
Is the goal Tactical bioMedia?
The showcasing or making public of techniques for scientific control over
organismic development has a tactical design. This is a more popular way of
explaining why we do public labs. To bring a hands-on experience to the
untrained crowd-sources demystification and takes relational knowledge to
the sites of contention. It sounds benevolent.
Accused of lowering the bar on a slippery slope.
The other half of Chris¹ question asks for delineation of what I mean by
cruel and unusual arts. Examples:
Tissue Culture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfOVEf7tVm0
Synthetic Biology
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_2uNKGxlzw
Embryology
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mve5b8RW6_8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBKgimtgWuM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgZ6o8FIeiE
Mutant Environmental testing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g1XIpbI_rk
Human Germline Alteration
http://itp.nyu.edu/classes/germline-spring2013/
http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=7002
Firstly, do these Bioart exposures merely normalize our novel ways of toying
with life? Wet-lab bioart has recently been read as a form of DIY Fukushima.
(Loose quote from a rescent public debate about a GMO permit filed with the
Ministry in the Hague to exhibit modified organisms (Solar Zeebrafish and
Bipolar Flower) in the Errorarium at the Ja Natuurlijk exhibition with
representatives: Rob Zwijnenberg, Per Staugaard, Lucas Evers De Waag,,
Herman Bekken Greenpeace, Dirk de Jong Ministery of Economic Affairs and
Miep Bos Gentechvrij {GMO Free EU}).
http://www.biosolarcells.nl/onderzoek/maatschappelijke-aspecten/artist-in-la
b-making-a-field-of-interpretation-for-biosolar-cells.html
It is keen to ask, is citizen science merely a practice of assuaging the
public¹s reactive disgust to new life science? This would be advertising,
the use of fine¹ art as propaganda for the biotechnical bubble we fund.
Actually, many DIY-BIO centres have no problem with the idea that these
hands-on labs would be staged to promote acceptance of the inherent safety
and casual usury that research entails. In fact, often being science led,
they fear the good name of science being help in dissonant hands.
http://genspace.org/event/20131007/1800/Biohacker%20Boot%20Camp
Lust for life
So art can pose prettily for public relations propping up science in a
redundant campaign and art can also chide the public for not being more
active in contestational debate:
http://www.critical-art.net/MolecularInvasion.html
If we uncover the root desire to inflict change, to breed or grow
imagination in lineage form, this is the culturing of lust, the incubating
of desire. Want is inbred and an excess of greed is more than likely a
genetic aberration (potentially curable with gene therapy), but lust for
life just is. What kind of transcendence leaves it¹s chthonic mark in the
brains and germcells of the ones it has come to know? What is life without
lust? Biotech is muddy parasitism.
³The urge to scope and poke, force evolution and morphologically sculpt is a
bridge that joins the Arts and the Sciences. But, I will say this once
because it is quite clear and concise, I think this process is cruel.
Physical Manipulation DevBio Arts as a way towards knowing or sculpting
Development is non-intuitive, intriguing, curious and lovely but there is no
doubt that the process is meddlesome, violent, surgical and often
gratuitously so.²
AZ from THE MUTAGENIC ARTS
magazine.ciac.ca/archives/no_23/en/dossier.htm
More on lust in Bioart:
Viva Vivo! Living Art Is Dead
http://www.emutagen.com/downloads/leonardoZaretsky.pdf
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Stillborn Arts
--empyre- soft-skinned space-- Oron Rich Lynn Tyler and Empyre Listies These arts are meant to confuse relations between hardened categories. Rich and Oron you are both doing that very well in two very different rhetorical styles! Experimental life spaces support artistic research without scientism or reason¹s reductionism to tether the artistry to meaning or repeatability. When recapitulating wet lab biological technics through the mutagenic forces of art¹ goals, we break with use value. We even rescind knowledge acquisition. Instead, we allow for a reading of science and art in the difficult land of luxurious, useless, process based, conceptual, secular catechism. Yes the tactical irony runs strong as the Lives involved have shambled into the dead end of Arts Sake¹. Is this the purity of research? How powerful is ritual sacrifice? When we ask how to make this an affirmation of anti-anthropocentrism the real question there is are we - A: talking about Nietzsche¹s afflicted overcoming and dire loving of life as affirming: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/nietzsche-family-circus B: talking to US ego psychology based, anti-phenomenal affirmations: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/affirmations Perhaps that is for Adam N., Rob and Cary to divulge. Is The Thing (Das Ding) positive thinking? For my focus, the multiplication of non-human organizational diversity intends to create socio-cultural, posthuman moiré patterns by physically genre bashing hereditary tropes and canalized traits. My research interests use cruel and unusual techniques to convey the altered ethical, legal and social structures of a transgenic world. This is achieved by investigating: novel architectures of the body, hereditary interaction design, inborn future body design technologies, cyborg relational aesthetics, environmental effects of new breeding techniques, alternative bio-based economies, poetic nomenclature for complicated processes, hands-on community laboratory collaborations, DIY-BIO interventionist strategies, and other art and science based emerging areas of contemporary art practice. In the case of IGM, the sites of contention are based on human anatomy and, in particular, hereditary cascade entry points for novel gene constructs. The questions are simply: Where to get genes in? How to get genes in? Which genes to pick and why? Who is produced? And, for the ethical foray how they feel in the world as bred sculptures of varied success¹. http://www.deepspeedmedia.com/diy-embryology/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] First Postings
--empyre- soft-skinned space-- Thanks Adam N. for having a mind meld on these topics. Good crew! Off the top, Bioart is living-materials-first in my addled brain. No offense to the object oriented animism of listmania but tinkers and tailors of life feel the experience differently than illustrators. The use of biomedia for aesthetic projection is the ethico-political stake we wield. The blood on the hands is part of the sacrificial rite, neh? That being sort of put out there bare, I am more interested in the debate being started in terms of the potentials for positive declension in the moulding of populations. I have to say that optimism in biopolitics, even in terms of techno-breeding for novel feelings, is not a total ruse. A trajectory from Charles Fourier, to Willhelm Reich, to Buckmister Fuller, not to mention the Bronx cheer of Charles Fort, trace the potential for a river of amorous flows. But can we really limit the emphasis on the work of the negative in Foulcault to that of a gore hound, netcasting for yet another Gilles de Rais? We have to remember that philosophy is caught up in the industrial confessionary. We may be parrahesiac cheerleaders, spreading liturgy for liturgy¹s sake, but the toying with fascism is just an armchair away from the radiation's leak. Mayr's migrating populations shower us with difference, but population genetics is being marketed as a post race identity politics for those in need of a new origin story from which to promulgate neo-superiorities (see http://www.ancestry.com/). In terms of affirming affirmation, to distort et echo Cary, I can only find it through that deep ecospheric indiscriminacy that Rob mentioned. Is the work of the positive to posit a function of the organism, orgasmically in optimismÉ in every direction? I hope so. Life is uncontained, oozing revelry and consuming lewdness. A snail-like acting is wet and slap-happy and on itÕs way. This is the question of affirmation. Can we be all accepting. This is a more systemic question, which should be looked at a variety of magnifications: The Panspermic Cosmos, The 'Gaia at Werk' Planetary Organism, Populations/Variations/Migrations/Meshing, The Crust Operas of Vitality (Spartan/Hedonism of Being inCorporate), The Organs without a Body (BatailleÕs Big Toe), The Selfish life of Cells, Subcellular Congeniality (hanging out on the sofas of the Endoplasmic Reticulum, alternative conformating). ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
