Re: [-empyre-] Welcome to Week 2 on -empyre_

[Cengiz Salman]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hello all,

Thank you so much for the opportunity to share some thoughts about the current 
pandemic. 

In a recent op-ed that I wrote with one of my advisors, Anna Watkins Fisher, we 
contextualize our pandemic and the under preparedness of the US federal 
government to provide crucial medical supplies in a quick history of lean 
production ("Nothing to Spare 
”).
 In this piece, we note that both essential employees and those most likely to 
lose their jobs at the moment are disproportionately women, people of color, 
immigrants, and young people. 

The reason I bring this up is because it has been particularly difficult for 
many of my students from already marginalized communities to adjust to our 
current situation. The University of Michigan is a predominantly white and 
incredibly affluent university, and this is reflected in our student body. My 
students of color and students from less affluent families frequently express 
difficulty adjusting to and navigating life on campus during an average 
semester, i.e. one that a pandemic has not disrupted.

I currently teach a large survey course on “digital culture” and have 75 
students. Like Elizabeth at U of Toronto, we have had to quickly transition 
from in person classes to an online format, and this transition is not working. 
The university’s decision to take our classes online, rather than simply cancel 
classes and grade students on what they were able to complete before the 
pandemic, is quickly demonstrating problems with the way the university treats 
it students. Making this transition is dangerous for it assumes a uniformity of 
our student body that simply does not reflect reality and the challenges that 
many of our students face.

What I have been witnessing in communications with my students is exactly what 
Melinda described last week, a contagion of anxiety and fear. But, this 
contagion does not seem at all evenly distributed, even amongst the 75 students 
enrolled in the sections of the course that I teach. How are we to expect 
students to complete work from a phone? What if they lack a computer or device 
altogether? What if they simply cannot concentrate? What can we do about 
students who have had to take on more responsibilities in their homes? (One of 
my students is very concerned because their parents are considered essential 
employees  and this student must provide child care for their younger 
siblings). 

Luckily, our university, like many others, have made all grades credit/no 
credit or pass/fail for the semester. While the administration refuses to 
simply stop the semester, the team of instructors that I work with to teach our 
“digital culture” course have decided to simply provide full credit for all 
completed assignments, excuse several others, and offer students with access 
issues other ways to complete coursework (through phone calls, hand written 
assignments that they can photograph or mail to us, etc.). Maybe this is all we 
can do...

I hope you and your loved ones are doing as well as possible given our current 
crisis.

With care,

Cengiz Salman
PhD Candidate
University of Michigan
Department of American Culture
Digital Studies
Pronouns: He/him/his

> On Apr 9, 2020, at 12:46 PM, Renate Ferro  wrote:
> 
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Many thanks to our special guests Christina McPhee and Melinda Rackham.  Also 
> to William Bain, Simon, Aviva Rahmani, Brett Stalbaum, Cengiz Salman, Gary 
> Hall and of course my two fellow moderators Tim Murray and Junting Huang for 
> posting this past week.  The tone this week has been introspective yet also 
> critical of the political, social, and cultural conditions so many of us are 
> facing globally.  We welcome our next set of invited guests Jonathan Basile, 
> Sorelle Henricus, Gloria Kim, Cengiz Salman, Paul Vanouse, and Elizabeth 
> Wijiaya.  We invite you all to share your thoughts about your own work and 
> experiences from where you are writing this week.  Looking forward to hearing 
> from all of you and again please be well and stay safe. 
> 
> Also, just to throw this out Christina McPhee had a great idea.  If any of 
> you are making COVID inspired work or work that is generated from our current 
> situation please feel free to post links within the empyre text but also to 
> post on our FACEBOOK page.  
> https://www.facebook.com/groups/empyrelistserv/
> 
> Best to you all, 
> Renate Ferro
> 
> Week 2:  Biographies
> Jonathan Basile is a Ph.D. Candidate in Emory University’s Comparative 
> Literature program and the creator of an online universal library, 
> libraryofbabel.info. His first book, Tar for Mortar: “The Library of Babel” 
> and the Dream of Totality, has been published by punctum books and translated 
> into Portuguese. His academic writing on biodeconstr

[-empyre-] Greetings

[Premesh Lalu]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--My apologies for being so late to send through my thanks for the invitation
to share with this wonderful group.

This past month we postponed a ceremony to award William Kentridge a joint
honorary doctorate conferred by the University of the Western Cape and the
Vrije Universiteit Brussels. The postponement comes in the wake of a
symposium, which preceded the lockdown, to discuss Kentridge's exhibition
at the Zeitz Mocca Museum of Contemporary African Art and Norval
Foundation. William himself shared his plans for the Centre for the Less
Good Idea. The work produced for Season 7 is now available on the Centre's
website. I would encourage you to follow the centre's recorded offerings.

We are frantically preparing for the onset of the spread of the Coronavirus
in sub-Saharan Africa. There is a nation-wide lockdown in South Africa,
Namibia and Zimbabwe, and a massive effort and citizenship drive to
safeguard large sections of the population who live in dire conditions.
That said, there is a major initiative called Iam4theArts to mobilise
support for artists whose livelihoods would be adversely affected by the
lockdown which has garnered the support of 9000 artists across the length
and breadth of South Africa.

Closer to home, I continue to work with architects on a building project
that will house a Laboratory of Kinetic Objects in partnership with the
Handspring Puppet Company, a documentary film school, an artists in
residence programme, a schooi of African guitar, and a project on
Communicating the Humanities. The refurbishment of an old derelict school
on the edge of the city will be the first opportunity for the historically
Black university to engage with the arts communities in and around Cape
Town. In the coming weeks, I hope to share some of the thinking around the
art interventions planned for the new facility and to learn from you about
how we might set to work on crafting an aesthetic education for our times.

Premesh

Premesh Lalu (Prof.)
DST/NRF Flagship on Critical Thought in African Humanities
Centre for Humanities Research
Faculty of Arts
University of the Western Cape

Private Bag X 17
Bellville
7535
Cape Town
(021) 959 3162
0716767806

http://www.chrflagship.uwc.ac.za/

-- 


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___
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Re: [-empyre-] Welcome to Week 2 on -empyre_

[Jonathan Basile]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Dear all,

Thank you to Junting and Renate for inviting me and to all the guests this
week. I'm very excited to take part.

A while ago, my dissertation research on scientific and philosophical
definitions of life brought me to focus on viruses, which, ever since a
pathogen was given this name, have always problematized the boundaries
between the organic and inorganic, life and death. While it doesn’t speak
directly to all of the ethical and political issues raised by the COVID
pandemic, it has shaped my thinking about aspects of the crisis. In short,
the thing that makes us vulnerable to viruses is the thing that makes us
alive.

Our knowledge of viruses was necessarily quite abstract at first - when it
was found that an agent of disease could pass through filters small enough
to trap bacteria these germs were called "viruses," a word that meant
poison but whose oldest meaning in English was "semen."

In 1935 a virus was crystallized for the first time, meaning quite
literally that a population of the Tobacco Mosaic Virus was formed into a
crystal by heating and cooling. This grabbed headlines because up to that
time it was assumed there was an absolute distinction between organic and
inorganic matter (life and death), but viruses were thought to be organic
and crystals inorganic. The synthesis of urea from inorganic chemicals was
another milestone in proving this boundary permeable.

Since molecular biology and the deciphering of the "genetic code," life has
been understood as what copies itself by storing instructions for
reproducing itself in its genes. Viruses have complicated this definition
of life because they clearly contain such instructions, but cannot copy
"themselves" without "hijacking" the machinery of another cell.

Some theorists and biologists therefore say they are not alive. Sometimes
this leads to the funny locution that they are not alive *because they are
parasites*. This may strike us as odd—aren’t parasites alive? If we bear
down on the question, we find that in fact no life form can persist without
taking something in from the environment and from other living things, and
that in fact this responsiveness to the environment (sometimes called
purposiveness) is the very definition of life.

Viruses are able to use us as machines because we are machines to
ourselves. We are able to live because we can rely on the functioning of
our own cellular machinery. Without the hospitality that makes us
vulnerable to viruses, our own life would be impossible.

The signs of this are everywhere. One hypothesis (though it is not a
consensus view) of the origin of life (abiogenesis) posits that the
earliest not-quite-living things were viruses, and that life as we know it
originated as a defense against their intrusions upon free-floating
nucleotide chains. This is known as the Virus World theory.

Furthermore, some of the most basic means of genetic transfer and
continuity among the earliest lifeforms rely upon certain viruses
(bacteriophages). And these transfers continue between viruses and all the
kingdoms of life, in what can’t even be called inter-species hybridization
but, according to prevalent theories, are matings of life with non-life.
Ten percent of the human genome is thought to have derived from genes
deposited in us by viruses, many of which provide beneficial contributions
to our organism.

Viruses are the origin of life and its continuity, and what makes us
vulnerable to the worst is also what grants us the possibility of the best.
Gene therapy, a cutting edge method for treating diseases that involves
implanting genes in our genome, depends on viruses as a gene delivery
system. Either a virus has its genetic material removed and synthetic genes
implanted in it, or a synthetic carrier is constructed that is modeled
after a virus.

While this doesn’t speak directly to the particular political corruption
and incompetence exacerbating the COVID-19 pandemic, it is not entirely
divorced from an ethico-political reflection on our current crisis. It is
impossible to render oneself entirely immune to viruses without eliminating
the life in oneself. And it is not simply a metaphorical application of
this principle to say that while there are good methods of prevention (e.g.
social distancing) against bad viruses, the same logic quickly becomes its
opposite. Any intervention that tries to focus aid within our own borders,
as if nothing could cross them (for example, sanctions preventing medical
supplies from reaching Iran, or stealing PPE from other countries
),
can only exacerbate the pandemic here.

Virality is vitality, for better and for worse.

Best,
Jonathan Basile
Tar for Mortar: The Library of Babel and the Dream of Totality
 || em português

[-empyre-] (no subject)

[Elizabeth Wijaya]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--I've been thinking about the discussion between Junting, Aviva and Melinda
on the porosity of borders—and Aviva's concern on "what will emerge now
from the chaos," particularly from authoritarian figures with a penchant
for building literal and symbolic walls. it does seem that on the level of
nation-states, the porosity of borders has led to an intensification of
nationalistic thinking and action, in terms of drawing even tighter
boundaries and guarding what's within a defined boundary, whether within a
nation-state, a city, or a family unit defined by residential proximity.

As a new immigrant to Toronto since last August after 7 years in the
States, I'm following the events and discourses in the States with a sense
of dread, familiarity and alienation. At first, I was caught up with
updates and that sense of sadness and guilt—sadness, as Renee says over the
projects that have been suspended—and guilt, over feeling sadness at
suspended projects when so many are in truly precarious and vulnerable
situations, and guilt over being away from family in Singapore and Malaysia
(if we leave Canada, we do not know when we'll be allowed back in since we
are not Permanent Residents). At the U of Toronto, we have just completed
three weeks of rushed online learning so now there's a quieting down as my
partner and I draw up new plans for this summer. So much of our work and
life had depended on so much travel, that this will be the first summer in
more than a decade that we will stay put within the confines of our
1-bedroom apartment. Grateful and guilty that we can do so. Plans and
experiments with cooking and baking have been punctuating our days, maybe
it's to still have something to be able to plan and come to fruition within
a small realm of predictability. And for the first time, I'm cultivating
microorganisms in the form of a 7-day old sourdough starter that's become
my marker of time and the displaced container of our deferred dreams.

Stay well, all
___
empyre forum
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http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

[-empyre-] Welcome to Week 2 on -empyre_

[Renate Ferro]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--
Many thanks to our special guests Christina McPhee and Melinda Rackham.  Also 
to William Bain, Simon, Aviva Rahmani, Brett Stalbaum, Cengiz Salman, Gary Hall 
and of course my two fellow moderators Tim Murray and Junting Huang for posting 
this past week.  The tone this week has been introspective yet also critical of 
the political, social, and cultural conditions so many of us are facing 
globally.  We welcome our next set of invited guests Jonathan Basile, Sorelle 
Henricus, Gloria Kim, Cengiz Salman, Paul Vanouse, and Elizabeth Wijiaya.  We 
invite you all to share your thoughts about your own work and experiences from 
where you are writing this week.  Looking forward to hearing from all of you 
and again please be well and stay safe. 

Also, just to throw this out Christina McPhee had a great idea.  If any of you 
are making COVID inspired work or work that is generated from our current 
situation please feel free to post links within the empyre text but also to 
post on our FACEBOOK page.  
https://www.facebook.com/groups/empyrelistserv/

Best to you all, 
Renate Ferro

Week 2:  Biographies
Jonathan Basile is a Ph.D. Candidate in Emory University’s Comparative 
Literature program and the creator of an online universal library, 
libraryofbabel.info. His first book, Tar for Mortar: “The Library of Babel” and 
the Dream of Totality, has been published by punctum books and translated into 
Portuguese. His academic writing on biodeconstruction and on irony has been 
published in the Oxford Literary Review, Critical Inquiry, Derrida Today, 
Variaciones Borges, Environmental Philosophy, Postmodern Culture, CR: The New 
Centennial Review and is forthcoming in Angelaki. His para-academic writing has 
been published in The Paris Review Daily, Public Books, Berfrois, Guernica, and 
minor literature[s]. This work can be accessed at jonathanbasile.info.

Sorelle Henricus works in the areas of critical theory, modern and contemporary 
literature and visual arts, and aesthetics and politics especially as it 
pertains to science and technology in culture. Her doctoral work traced the 
significance of the parallels between deconstruction and molecular biology, 
particularly converging around the concept of the gene as being constructed as 
primarily an artefact of data. 

Gloria Kim is Assistant Professor of Media and Culture at the University of 
California-Riverside. She works in the areas of the environmental humanites, 
science and technology studies, and media and visual culture. She is currently 
writing a book manuscript titled "The Microbial Resolve: Vision, Mediation, and 
Security," in which she  explores modes of mediation, forms of kinship, means 
of capital, and senses of life and living surfacing amid efforts to manage 
emerging viruses. In a second project, Gloria examines discourses of the 
microbiome bridging insight from critical data studies, social theory, affect, 
security studies, material culture, and the anthropocene. 

Cengiz Salman (he/him) is a PhD candidate in the Department of American Culture 
(Digital Studies) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His dissertation 
research broadly focuses on the relationship between digital media, algorithms, 
unemployment, and racial capitalism. He holds a
Master of Arts degree in Social Science from the University of Chicago (2013), 
and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology with a specialization in Muslim 
Studies from Michigan State University (2011). Salman is a recipient of a 
Fulbright IIE Award, which he used to conduct research on urban transformation 
projects in Turkey from 2011-2012.

Paul Vanouse is an artist and professor of Art at the University at Buffalo, 
NY, where he is the founding director of the Coalesce Center for Biological 
Art. Interdisciplinarity and impassioned amateurism guide his (bio-media) art 
practice, which uses molecular biology techniques to challenge “genome hype” 
and to explore critical issues surrounding contemporary biotechnologies. 
Vanouse’s projects have been funded by Rockefeller Foundation, Creative Capital 
Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the 
Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Sun 
Microsystems, and the National Science Foundation. His bio-media and 
interactive cinema projects have been exhibited in over 25 countries and widely 
across the US. His scent-based bioartwork, Labor, was awarded a Golden Nica at 
Prix Ars Electronica, 2019. He has an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University.


Elizabeth Wijaya is Assistant Professor of East Asian Cinema in the Department 
of Visual Studies and Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. 
She is co-founder of the Singapore-based film production company, E&W Films. 
She is working on her book manuscript on the visible and invisible worlds of 
trans-Chinese cinema.  

Renate Ferro
Visiting Associate Professor
Di