OPERATION 1
Hereby some ensembles that gather damage in different modes:
* Transgenic Living Sensor Fish
On the printed news pages of a Hong Kong newspaper, thousands of glowing rice fish, appear to illuminate the green waters of Victoria harbour in a spectacular display. The headline of the article, reads “Harbour Dirty, Fish Illuminate”. The news report tells the story of a dirty harbour polluted by Chinese industry, illuminated by the trails of glowing genetically engineered fish. This is the harbour famous around the world for the light show that takes place every night for tourists. Skyscrapers that line the harbour are illuminated in changing patterns that imply they can communicate with one another, and the lights and laser patterns are reflected in the surface of the water. The newspaper's ink-soaked pages depict water-level constellations of green fluorescent light, spreading outwards from the skyscrapers of Hong Kong’s financial district, in a shimmering pattern that appears on the waterfront. In this toxic light show as petrochemicals from the industries and production of Guanzong province circulate through the Hong Kong basin, they appear, fleetingly, as glowing traces, illuminated by the bodies of transgenic fish as they glow in response to the presence of the chemicals. In this scene, toxicity is an interruption, a disturbance, that forges new relations and disorganizes accustomed ways of being.
GFP Medaka as a diffractive figure, through which toxicity, feminist theory, computation and toxicity are parsed. Engineered as a living environmental sensor the GFP Medaka has been patented to “make” determinate the presence of estrogenic endocrine (hormone) disruptors (EEDs) in marine water, fresh water, food, and cosmetics. In the presence of estrogen, the transgenic Medaka fish express a modified gene and synthesise green fluorescent protein in their liver–-and the intensity of this fluorescence is measured by executing an algorithm that counts the brightness of the pixels when the fish are viewed under a microscope. As the GFP Medaka in the pipet swim towards the solution in the wells, or they emit an excited fluorescent glow, as the light from the microscope passes through them, my engagements with them seem to illuminate their enduring liveliness of suffering.
* Hydraponic fish for permacutlure (Helen)
- what is going on here?
Permaculture visions in which fish filter the water for plants
- which are the agents implied? alive or not, human or not, powerful or powerless: Permaculture experts, fish many species who can live in fish tanks for example goldfish, tanks, plants, compounds, fossil fuels (or lack of), climate, soil(in its absence).
- wheres? spatiality / situatedness / displacements / distribution: permaculture communities, homes, gardens, destroyed soils.
- whens? temporality / durability / existing / extinct / repeated: enduring, replaceable, repeated, near futures, possible futures,
- semiotic-materialities: what signs and matters are at work in this ensemble?: alternative economies, permaculture agriculture, survival politics, off grid politics, speculative futures, food futures, fish corporealities, capacities of fish bodies to clean and filter water, imaginaries of symbiosis, fish as less animate, fish as labourer, fish as tool/source.
- Your entanglement with the scene: writing about it here, learning about it in a permaculture promotion talk from Starhawk.
- can a pattern be identified here? not accounting for the liveliness of fish, exploitation of fish creative force, anthropocentrism, anthronormativity in future visionings to protect human life. to what extent is this damage structural, or singular? fish damage, plant growth, human food, and entangled web of suffering and damage.
* biological computation
- what is going on here?
Methods, tools and softwares for understanding biological process such as amino acid production. Used in biomedical science for generating
models and designs for immunisations and pharmaceuticals.
- which are the agents implied? alive or not, human or not, powerful or powerless: software, operating systems, hardware, compute powers, platforms, databases, expert scientists, technicians, synthetic proteins, non-synthetic proteins, nonhuman animals, patients, big pharma, academic funding, government policies, borders/not borders, biohackers, DIY biologists.
- wheres? spatiality / situatedness / displacements / distribution laboratories across a variety, garages?, network infrastructures, cloud storage, screens, CPU's, browsers, wetlabs/drylabs, imagaintions, science fictions, press releases, news sites.
- whens? temporality / durability / existing / extinct / repeated: as fast as possible by some, maybe as slow as possible by others
- semiotic-materialities: what signs and matters are at work in this ensemble? bodies, cellular operations, biological signals, hormones, proteins, hard drives, rare minerals, networks speeds, naming, classification systems, discourse of cure, treatment, immunisation, discovery.
- Your entanglement with the scene: watching rotating models on the screen, imagined body/patient, amateur as an axis to their expertise.
- can a pattern be identified here? patterns drive these practices to what extent is this damage structural, or singular? both entangled
* chip critters (Helen)
- what is going on here? Use of microbes as a computer component - often used to signal toxicity in harmful scenes such as oil spills or waste plants.
- which are the agents implied? alive or not, human or not, powerful or powerless microbes such as bacterias or algae, waste managers, oil spill cleanup workers, other nonhumans also at risk of toxicity from these scenes such as plants, marine life etc, at risk human workers, human residents in these scenes, network infrastructures, software, servers, clouds, silicon, chips, sensor labs - hi tech, life INC, workers in the global south.
- wheres? spatiality / situatedness / displacements / distribution: global south component production, chip production in sensor labs clean rooms, toxic scenes landfill, mining waste, spill sites and their distributions globally. Monitoring or remediation takes sites at places where government/corporations/those with resources demarcate human/nonhuman others as needing protection.
- whens? temporality / durability / existing / extinct / repeated: crisis crisis crisis, post drill, post spill , post kill.
- semiotic-materialities: what signs and matters are at work in this ensemble? Toxic for some but not others, protection for some but not others, sometimes anthocentrism, benavolence, imaginaries of environmental protection, electrons, proteins, minerals, endocrines, bodily processes, contaminants, PCBS, chemical infrastrucures, gender panic.
- Your entanglement with the scene: user of fossil fuels, ethnography of chips, environmental concerns
- can a pattern be identified here? patterning datas, who gets to matter, patterns of injury, matabolisms to what extent is this damage structural, or singular? both?
* cryopolitics (jxxx)
- what is going on here? -> the management of life through the control of it based on temperature: freezing bodyparts, reproductive cells and embrios is a contemporary industry/market. - which are the agents implied? alive or not, human or not, powerful or powerless -> eggs, freezers, thermometers, assisted reproduction companies, societal discourse and imagery, gendered bodies, - wheres? spatiality / situatedness / displacements / distribution -> in vitro, fridges, laboratories, waiting rooms, webpages, professional couch rooms, biology classrooms, - whens? temporality / durability / existing / extinct / repeated -> now-or-never, in your 30's, below zero, - semiotic-materialities: what signs and matters are at work in this ensemble? - Your entanglement with the scene - can a pattern be identified here? to what extent is this damage structural, or singular?
* endocrine disruption (jxxx)
- what is going on here?
- which are the agents implied? alive or not, human or not, powerful or powerless
- wheres? spatiality / situatedness / displacements / distribution
- whens? temporality / durability / existing / extinct / repeated
- semiotic-materialities: what signs and matters are at work in this ensemble?
- Your entanglement with the scene
- can a pattern be identified here? to what extent is this damage structural, or singular?
* turbocapitalism (jxxx)
- what is going on here? - which are the agents implied? alive or not, human or not, powerful or powerless - wheres? spatiality / situatedness / displacements / distribution - whens? temporality / durability / existing / extinct / repeated - semiotic-materialities: what signs and matters are at work in this ensemble? - Your entanglement with the scene - can a pattern be identified here? to what extent is this damage structural, or singular?
* cosmic rays and bit flipping (jxxx) - what is going on here? - which are the agents implied? alive or not, human or not, powerful or powerless - wheres? spatiality / situatedness / displacements / distribution - whens? temporality / durability / existing / extinct / repeated - semiotic-materialities: what signs and matters are at work in this ensemble? - Your entanglement with the scene - can a pattern be identified here? to what extent is this damage structural, or singular?
* aqua_forensic (laura) - what is going on here? invisible anthropogenic (pharmaceutical) chemical pollutants - which are the agents implied? humans, oceans, chemicals, molecules, phantoms, organisms, rocks - wheres? spatiality / situatedness / displacements / distribution. World’s waters - whens? temporality / durability / existing / extinct / repeated: repetition, extension, perpetuated - semiotic-materialities: what signs and matters are at work in this ensemble? ghost haunting, bodily of the waters, chemical structures, the fluidity of flows, water-media - Your entanglement with the scene: learn from the displacements required for measurements in terms of f bioacoustics, vibrations and presences - can a pattern be identified here? to what extent is this damage structural, or singular? aquatic animals, micro-organisms, humans,
development patterns of all living organisms. Structural damage/scale: from the micro level (viruses, bacteria and other microorganisms)to the largest organisms in the oceans
* Botanist - Tsing (laura)
- what is going on here? course of millions of years, one might imagine that spores could spread the species.1
There is something about the stratosphere that inspires airy dreams. Imagine, spores circling the globe!
- which are the agents implied? alive or not, human or not, powerful or powerless: plants, microbes, fungus, humans, spores, movement, - wheres? spatiality / situatedness / displacements / distribution: individuality non individuality, specie, many genetic-signature - whens? temporality / durability / existing / extinct / repeated: open-ended - semiotic-materialities: what signs and matters are at work in this ensemble? liminal, exploration, enacted in material terms, cooperation, collaborative ways of living, interconnection, materials and methods - Your entanglement with the scene: to hack the expectation of scaling up. Nonscalability- Scalability and indeterminacy, transformative relations - can a pattern be identified here? to what extent is this damage structural, or singular? Hegemony of scalability, herbaria, data-bases-taxonomy
* Oncomouse (laura)
- what is going on here?
- which are the agents implied? alive or not, human or not, powerful or powerless
- wheres? spatiality / situatedness / displacements / distribution
- whens? temporality / durability / existing / extinct / repeated
- semiotic-materialities: what signs and matters are at work in this ensemble?
- Your entanglement with the scene
- can a pattern be identified here? to what extent is this damage structural, or singular?
* GMO bacteria (laura) - what is going on here? - which are the agents implied? alive or not, human or not, powerful or powerless: bacteria, humans, gadgets, proteins - wheres? spatiality / situatedness / displacements / distribution: labs, - whens? temporality / durability / existing / extinct / repeated: now, possible nows, possible futures - semiotic-materialities: what signs and matters are at work in this ensemble? promises of healing, cure, reparations - Your entanglement with the scene - can a pattern be identified here? to what extent is this damage structural, or singular?
