[Academy Lectures 2016.03.20]

Abstract

A material is always the ghost of itself; in the sense that it embodies its own multiple temporalities. Its past, present and future intertwine in what presents itself to us as an integrated whole, an opaque and static form of being. We do not see any ghosts. What we forget is that the material’s cells or molecules manifest the narrative that brought it here, in front of us. Every growth, sedimentation, and minuscule touch. And along with this manifestation, is a multitude of beginnings and potentialities, both past and future, present as traces, as energy, as whatever it is that stays after the electron jumps from its orbit, emits a blink of brilliant light, only to halter and return.

Could you catch an electron with your bare hands? Would you not get shocked by its charge, even if it was ever so small? If matter is intelligent and materials transmit energies of their own, what does it mean to wholeheartedly expose oneself to such transmissions? Is there a difference between catching a) a flu b) a dream c) a ghost? They all may get passed on through touch. What to do? Join the Untouchables? Hardly a good option if one seeks to make art. What agency is there in one’s exposure to elementary dynamics one can barely control? Fate knows its own plasticity. How to mold it?