E I G E N L I C H T

[nemfrog]

On the elements of light and their identity with those of matter, radiant and fixed. 1838. Frontispiece. 

Internet Archive

[jareckiworld]

Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn (1881-1962) The Breath of Creation [mixed media on cardboard, ca. 1926]

[nemfrog]

Superficial lymphatic system of the human body. Medical education poster, detail. 1956.

Wellcome Collection.

[loneberry]

“…the mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.”

Oscar Wilde, Salomé

[altrbody]

Art, not unlike critical philosophy, is for Deleuze an intensive practice that aims at creating new ways of thinking, perceiving and sensing Life's infinite possibilities. By transposing us beyond the confines of bound identities, art becomes necessarily inhuman in the sense of non-human in that it connects to the animal, the vegetable, earthy and planetary forces that surround us. Art is also, moreover, cosmic in its resonance and hence posthuman by structure, as it carries us to the limits of what our embodied selves can do and endure. In so far as art stretches the boundaries of representation to the utmost, it reaches the limits of life itself and thus confronts the horizon of death.

-Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman

[neoyorzapoteca]

“The future is necessarily monstrous: the figure of the future, that is, that which can only be surprising, that for which we are not prepared, you see, is heralded by species of monsters. —Jacques Derrida6 MONSTERS ARE ADMITTEDLY horrific entities. But monsters did not sprout autonomous of context or history; they have always been in dynamic interaction with the “city” that exiles them to the wilderness. This is why monstrosity can serve as a cultural means to examine ourselves. To meet ourselves as if for the first time. And, perhaps, there could be no better time to confront ourselves than now, in these times charged with racism and extermination. I read monsters as cultural technology—as mythic figures that have always been intimately entwined with human becomings. From a time past remembering, we’ve needed monsters to define ourselves, to teach our children what not to do, to sound warnings about the future, to define the territorial boundaries of our habitats (and therefore carve out the wilderness), and to dream about the impossible. Indeed, monsters play a crucial social role: they challenge our addictions to particular forms and disturb the familiar. Their unusual appearances and queer bodies have long been employed as warnings of divine wrath to come, or something gruesome and perverse happening behind the scenes. In the sense that monsters cut through the parallelity of our lives, upsetting the business of the hour … astonishing us and opening up new considerations that were previously unavailable, they are transversal disruptions of order. They are playful reconfigurations of flesh and therefore embodiments of the radical openness of the real. Monsters teach us about the otherwise. The emerging picture is that we are truly monstrous, composite all the way down, and that if we were to meet the meaty dimensions of our bodies, we would be frightened by just how unwieldy identities are.”

— When You Meet the Monster, Anoint Its Feet – Bayo Akomolafe

[splattergut]

Nevrographia universalis

Raymond Vieussens,1685

[nemfrog]

“Somatic afferent component.” The form and functions of the central nervous system. 1923.

Internet Archive

[mequededormidazzz]

El Hombre imaginario

El hombre imaginario vive en una mansión imaginaria rodeada de árboles imaginarios a la orilla de un río imaginario

De los muros que son imaginarios penden antiguos cuadros imaginarios irreparables grietas imaginarias que representan hechos imaginarios ocurridos en mundos imaginarios en lugares y tiempos imaginarios

Todas las tardes tardes imaginarias sube las escaleras imaginarias y se asoma al balcón imaginario a mirar el paisaje imaginario que consiste en un valle imaginario circundado de cerros imaginarios

Sombras imaginarias vienen por el camino imaginario entonando canciones imaginarias a la muerte del sol imaginario

Y en las noches de luna imaginaria sueña con la mujer imaginaria que le brindó su amor imaginario vuelve a sentir ese mismo dolor ese mismo placer imaginario y vuelve a palpitar el corazón del hombre imaginario

-Nicanor Parra

[philodendrongoeldii]

Cave Networks, Fungi, and What it Means to be Alive

“Fear of Depths” by Jacob Geller // Illustration of green mold by Carlton C. Curtis, “Nature and Development of Plants” //  YouTube comment by The Florida Man // Illustration of a neuron, from “Neurons and glial cells” // Merlin Sheldrake, “Entangled Life” // map of Mammoth Cave H.C. Hovey // YouTube comment by Lorenzo Pachecho // Illustration of grass roots by Mohamed El Mazlouzi // Merlin Sheldrake, “Entangled Life”

[cparti-mkiki]

what bliss

[starrmarr-deactivated20260106]

[technofossil]

Dr Alina Utrata: Corporations and the Colonization of Outer Space

In this article, Dr Alina Utrata (Career Development Fellow in Politics) discusses her research on the politics of technology corporations.

[surrealistespleen]

[neoyorzapoteca]

Cristina Peri Rossi

[noctipotent]

“For the sublime has no object either. When the starry sky, a vista of open seas or a stained glass window shedding purple beams fascinate me, there is a cluster of meaning, of colors, of words, of caresses, there are light touches, scents, sighs, cadences that arise, shroud me, carry me away, and sweep me beyond the things that I see, hear, or think. The “sublime” object dissolves in the raptures of a bottomless memory. It is such a memory, which, from stopping point to stopping point, remembrance to remembrance, love to love, transfers that object to the refulgent point of the dazzlement in which I stray in order to be. As soon as I perceive it, as soon as I name it, the sublime triggers—it has always already triggered—a spree of perceptions and words that expands memory boundlessly.

I then forget the point of departure and find myself removed to a secondary universe, set off from the one where “I” am—delight and loss. Not at all short of but always with and through perception and words, the sublime is a something added that expands us, overstrains us, and causes us to be both here, as dejects, and there, as others and sparkling. A divergence, an impossible bounding. Everything missed, joy—fascination.” 

— Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror

[technofossil]

Twenty-five years ago, when I first started thinking about living in Lincolnshire, I kept coming up against strange preconceptions. People I

[nouvellesciencevaguefiction]

La puerta de la fantasía

¿Qué es una pantalla de fantasía, una “interfaz”? A veces la encontramos incluso en la naturaleza, como en el caso del lago Cerknica, en Eslovenia: un lago intermitente (…) que siempre fue visto como una especie de pantalla mágica, el milagro de algo que sale de la nada. (…) Tal vez esta sea la definición más elemental de mecanismo: una máquina que produce un efecto, en el sentido estricto de un efecto “mágico” para los sentidos, de un evento que produce una fractura (…) Un mecanismo sería, pues, aquello que explica la producción de una “ilusión”. La idea crucial es que la comprensión del mecanismo no destruye en absoluto la ilusión, el “efecto”; incluso podría decirse que vuelve palpable la fractura entre las causas corporales y su efecto superficial: baste pensar en los making off (…)

Slavoj Zizek, Lacrimae Rerum