[spectre] Open Call MATTER IN FLUX study group

[Margarida Mendes]

FROM: THE WORLD IN WHICH WE OCCUR

Call for readers!

Deadline February 18 2019

MATTER IN FLUX is an online study group co-led by the hosts of *The World
in Which We Occur* <http://twwwo.org/>. It is premised on the notion that
in order to respond to emergent political and ecological challenges we need
to broaden our channels of exchange. Research, reading, and analysis
requires time, and in the current work panorama which most of us co-inhabit
today there is seldom enough of it. Establishing modes of inquiry can lead
to a better understanding of our world and how we can step back and
reflect. Posing questions also helps us to observe, and meditate on, how
our environments are mutating, under which circumstances, while triggering
steps for future action.

Our intention is that the MATTER IN FLUX online study group will probe
these conditions. Broadly, it looks at the history of materiality and
examine the scientific criteria that sets matter into motion, so as to
grant agency to social inquiry and conceptual labor. Inherent to the study
group’s research line and interrogative approach are: politically enmeshed
scientific affairs in ecological politics and policy, economies of
transition, history of science, material studies, and gender studies in
science. MATTER IN FLUX will pay particular attention to metabolic
transactions, plasmatic fictions, and various degrees of para-scientific
approaches. Fiction will also play a role in the consideration and
portrayal of these subjects.

If you wish to join the study group please write to us by *February 18th* at
twwwoarchive at gmail.com to express you interest in joining the group by
responding to the question below. Also, send a description of yourself in
one sentence (your research aims). You are not required to be a specialist
of the drafted themes to participate in the group. However, you should
express a capacity to tease apart the concepts at hand with intellectual
rigor, aptitude, and passion. If you have a question about the group,
please do write to us, we are eager to hear from you.

What would be the perfect hacking operation you would aim to conduct in
2019? In your description please consider political, ecological and
infrastructural shifts. Feel free to embrace fiction and hard science or
whatever suits your fancy.

Application to MATTER IN FLUX is designed for anyone interested in the
concerns outlined in this call, encouraging diverse approaches to research
methodologies that stretch beyond typical academic profiling. Participants
are expected to commit to all sessions considering that only 8 to 10
participants will be accepted. Participants will be notified via email.

*Texts read so far:*

Session 1

"Woman have no Fatherland" by *Maria Mies*, included in *Ecofeminism *co-edited
with Vandana Shiva

Chapter 18 from *Surfacing* by *Margaret Atwood*

Introduction from *The Weird and the Eerie *by *Mark Fisher*

Session 2

"Can Rocks Die - Life and Death Inside the Carbon Imaginary", from
*Geontologies
a Requiem to late Liberalism *by *Elizabeth Povinelli*

"This Stone" a poem by *Ursula K.LeGuin*

Session 3 - introduced by special guest *Barbara Orland,* Historian of Food
and Nutrition, University of Basel

"Matter in Flux" by *Barbara Orland*

“Treatise on the Powers of Medicine” by *Boerhaave*

Session 4

“Hydrofeminism: Or, on how to become a body of water” by *Astrida Neimanis*

“Amniotechnics” by *Sophie Lewis*

Session 5

“The necessary gap: Chaos as self in the education of Henry Adams” by
*N.Katherine
Hayles* in *Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and
Science*

“Chaos 1870” in *The Education of Henry Adams *by *Henry Adams*

Session 6 - introduced by special guest *Esther Leslie, *Professor in
Political Aesthetics. Co-director of the Birkbeck Institute for the
Humanities

"Flowing Crystals" from *Liquid Crystals - The Science and Art of a Fluid
Form *by *Esther Leslie*

"Photography and Liquid Intelligence" by *Jeff Wall*

Session 7

“The Metabolism of Philosophy, in Three Parts” by *Hannah Landecker *in B.
Malkmus and I. Cooper, eds. *Dialectic and Paradox: Configurations of the
Third in Modernity*

“Crystals,  Fabrics, and  Fields: Metaphors  of Organicism in
Twentieth-Century  Developmental Biology” p.62-63 by *Donna Haraway*

Session 8

“Form’s Effortless Efficacy” from *How Forests Think* by *Eduardo Kohn*

“The Imperative of Responsibility” p106 by *Hans Jonas*

Session 9

Introduced by special guest *Elizabeth Povinelli, *Professor of
Anthropology and Gender Studies, Columbia University

*Terms:*

–Participants are encouraged from different sectors and parts of the world.

–1 session per month at 19:00 (CET time) on the last Tuesday of the month.
Sessions are comprised of reading, analysis, and discussion.

–Specific sessions will be accompanied by occasional invited guests,
including but not limited to authors of assigned texts.

–Sessions are held online at Google Hangouts.

–The group will consist of 8-10 participants.

–There is no participation fee.


more info: http://twwwo.org/studygroup.html
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