<div dir="ltr">Dear all,<div><br></div><div>Thank you to Junting and Renate for inviting me and to all the guests this week. I'm very excited to take part.</div><div><br></div><div><p style="margin:9pt 0in;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:rgb(45,59,69)">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.</span></p>
<p style="margin:9pt 0in;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:rgb(45,59,69)">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." </span></p>
<p style="margin:9pt 0in;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:rgb(45,59,69)">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.</span></p>
<p style="margin:9pt 0in;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:rgb(45,59,69)">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.</span></p>
<p style="margin:9pt 0in 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:rgb(45,59,69)">Some theorists
and biologists therefore say they are not alive. Sometimes this leads to the
funny locution that they are not alive <em>because
they are parasites</em>. 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. </span></p>
<p style="margin:9pt 0in 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:rgb(45,59,69)">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.</span></p>
<p style="margin:9pt 0in 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:rgb(45,59,69)">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. </span></p>
<p style="margin:9pt 0in 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:rgb(45,59,69)">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, </span><span style="color:rgb(45,59,69);font-family:"Helvetica Neue";font-size:12pt">in what can’t even be called </span>inter-species<span style="color:rgb(45,59,69);font-family:"Helvetica Neue";font-size:12pt">
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.</span></p>
<p style="margin:9pt 0in 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:rgb(45,59,69)">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. </span></p>
<p style="margin:9pt 0in 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:rgb(45,59,69)">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 <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/03/ppe-world-supplies-coronavirus-163955" style="color:rgb(5,99,193)">stealing
PPE from other countries</a>), can only exacerbate the pandemic here.</span></p>
<p style="margin:9pt 0in 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:rgb(45,59,69)">Virality is vitality, for better and for worse.</span></p><p style="margin:9pt 0in 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:rgb(45,59,69)">Best,</span></p><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">Jonathan Basile</div><div dir="ltr"><font size="1"><a href="https://punctumbooks.com/titles/tar-for-mortar/" target="_blank">Tar for Mortar: The Library of Babel and the Dream of Totality</a> || <a href="https://punctumbooks.com/titles/massa-por-argamassa-a-biblioteca-de-babel-e-o-sonho-de-totalidade/" target="_blank">em português</a><br></font></div><div dir="ltr"><font size="1"><a href="http://jonathanbasile.info" target="_blank">jonathanbasile.info</a> || <a href="http://libraryofbabel.info" target="_blank">libraryofbabel.info</a></font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 12:46 PM Renate Ferro <<a href="mailto:rferro@cornell.edu">rferro@cornell.edu</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/empyrelistserv/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/groups/empyrelistserv/</a><br>
<br>
Best to you all, <br>
Renate Ferro<br>
<br>
Week 2: Biographies<br>
Jonathan Basile is a Ph.D. Candidate in Emory University’s Comparative Literature program and the creator of an online universal library, <a href="http://libraryofbabel.info" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">libraryofbabel.info</a>. 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 <a href="http://jonathanbasile.info" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">jonathanbasile.info</a>.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
Renate Ferro<br>
Visiting Associate Professor<br>
Director of Undergraduate Studies<br>
Department of Art<br>
Tjaden Hall 306<br>
<a href="mailto:rferro@cornell.edu" target="_blank">rferro@cornell.edu</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
empyre forum<br>
<a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" target="_blank">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br>
<a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a></blockquote></div>