----------empyre- soft-skinned space---------------------- Ciclón, thank you for suggesting that I think about Native rituals in my everyday life and how they might resonate with the listserv’s themes. You know how I’ve struggled with these issues in our phone conversations over the years, and your feedback has been invaluable.
I have learned much from your and Cheto Castellano’s analyses of the medicalization of your canine companion, Luk Kahlo. Most impactful perhaps was the presentation you made to my seminar on symbiosis and posthumanism in 2015, when you shared how those experiences with Luk critically impacted your lives. You’ve helped me to make important decisions and to be a better human to my greyhound kin Phina, who is living with advanced heart failure and is difficult to care for. The poetics and politics of your contribution to the listserv on Monday, and what you’ve shared with me over the years, are persistently thoughtful and important. As I mentioned to Ciclón via phone last week, in late October I gave two connected lectures in Claremont about Darwin and the messy stuff of paradigm shifts, bringing him and Mendel into conversation with Marcuse, Foucault, Margulis, Haraway, LaDuke, and others. These talks were based on preliminary research for a book to be co-authored with my partner, and they will be edited into an introductory discussion for that. I am especially excited for a section that will put Donna Haraway into conversation with Winona LaDuke around the topic of relationality. My partner Bradley is an Anishinaabe head and neck surgeon with a PhD in microbiology from the Univ of Michigan. He specializes in cell signaling, and is extensively researching a mushroom used in traditional Anishinaabe medicine for anti-inflammation and anti-tumor therapies. LaDuke is a household name for us. I recommend her talk, “Seeds of Our Ancestors” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHNlel72eQc ) and to possibly consider the more involved challenge of reading her book /All Our Relations/ with Haraway’s /The Companion Species Manifesto/. Ciclón, I fondly recall how you performed for my students and me in 2015, reminding us to enjoy the humor and the love and the other pleasures of multispecies consciousness. Cheto, I admire your transmedia art produced individually and with Sin Kabeza. I remain impressed by your visions of multispecies architecture, and the prosthetics you have created for people to expand/attune their bodies to different morphologies, produced in collaboration with Ciclón. I wonder if either of you would like to make further connections between the projects and experiences mentioned here, or if you would like to discuss other related items of interest from your worlds with the Empyre community? _______________________________________________ empyre forum empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
