#scraps book

[grubloved]

star animal by kasumi oomine

[sprouch]

olive klug

[grubloved2]

fascism is intrinsically connected to meat-eating in the same way it is intrinsically connected to art and to sex and to magic(religion) and to family. all of those things are inescapable and powerful and meaningful facets of life and are therefore excellent avenues for control and the exersize of power. i don't think arguing that meat-eating is essentially fascist is particularly useful. instead it is more productive to explore fascism's current iterant and the way it uses the pillars of life, including meat, to wield power and exert control over the world and the people in it

[grubloved]

swimmy with baby bottle by kasumi oomine

[grubloved]

star animals by kasumi oomine

[grubloved]

two quotes from How to Pay Attention: Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi by leach schnelbach for reactmag

[grubloved]

do u have a set of little brain tools u like to use to think about things? here are some of mine

grass sheep: based on the story of an ai who identified photos of sheep correctly, but then it turned out it was recognizing photos with grass in the background. i try to find the grass of a sheep when i'm thinking about the "proof" of something to identify possible other things that could produce that result other than the thing that is assumed to be being proven

hot swap: when thinking about something's place in the world, i like to try to imagine what would need to be different about the larger context for something else to take its place. what would need to be different? what would follow as a change? i often do this to two things that are presented as opposites.

sterility vs bioactivity: there's two solutions to reptile husbandry, one of having sterile and frequently cleaned items to manually remove waste and kill disease, and the other of creating a small ecosystem to reduce and process waste and prevent disease by having other things living there. i use this to think about what alternate routes of solutions could be other than manual control/reduction/elimination of problems

third axis: if i get stuck on a problem that seems to have only two answers, i try to move "vertically" away from it. if something must be either true or false, what would it mean for it to not matter either way? if something must be either supported or fought against, what would it mean to make it irrelevant entirely?

[grubloved]

i see a lot of art filled with plants, like, in the american art scene there seems to be a kind of general movement towards and appreciation of ruined structures being overtaken by nature. offices full of dead computers and leaves. walls with ivy. old factories crawling with new growth. a symbol of degrowth, of new futures that devour and reject colonial modernism, of a refutation of the tyranny over land. it's a nice sentiment.

but consistently im noticing something odd, which is that over and over the plants depicted in art are very familiar -- they're houseplants. pothos. monstera. calathea. zamioculcas. plants growing in the wrong place, at the wrong time, in the wrong climate, a mishmash of unrelated folks with far-flung origins symbolizing "natural" retaking of the modern world.

plants, specifically, that are directly tied to the legacy of colonialism. from northern africa. from southern america. from india. plants that were collected as curios during periods of direct imperialism. plants kept as trophies, plants sold at high prices. plants that are "exotic". that are beautiful. that are high-value. plants whose people got no payment for their capture.

they're the plants people in american colonial territory, who lack access to native plant community, see most often -- that is, other than "weeds". and so when these artists reach for the pure idea of plant, the concept of nature, these plants are their only blueprint. dragging with them all of the baggage of hundreds of years of empire.

it's incredible how much this changes the messaging of the image. dreams of ecological participation stained with a creeping theme of alienation from their native biosphere. the thumbprint of colonialism, clear as day. a hopeful vision of the future, kneecapped by its own symbology. hundreds of individual artists so alienated from their own ecosystems that even their fantasy of participation with nature is inextricable from colonialist trophies. trying to imagine reclaiming the world.