Near Extinction Rituals

Concept Text:
The project I hope to develop toward a proof-of-concept prototype during this residency is “Transcorporeal Atmospheres” which is second of three speculations within the theme of Near Extinction Rituals above (please see Posthuman Habitats in portfolio which was the first of the speculations). With an increasing “global water crisis” challenging the survival of most of earth’s extant species, the work does not provide solutions, but rather attempts to dismantle thinking about water as a commodifiable private resource and reinstates the planetary hydrocommons. It evokes the “gestational ethics” of water’s creative and connective capacity – denying the humanist model of discrete individuality – and attempts to formulate an aqueous ecopolitics that might be wielded to address water crisis and conflict. Transcorporeal Atmospheres imagines how to make palpable our planetary hydrocommons through an assemblage that revels in the entanglements of life – an aqueous mode of “living and dying together” in the ruins of what we have created. It recognizes water in all its states – particularly in its least visible – as vapor, and its subversive permeation through supposedly sealed membranes. The speculation is the design of a technological infrastructure that makes manifest the communal processes of transpiration and condensation through a conscious collective breath. While the theoretical backbone of this project and some conceptual ideas about the design have been under development for a few months, I hope to push the design toward a proof-of-concept prototype that I could use to digitally fabricate the work in the months to come in order to test out the workability of the technology.