Materia: Uncontained Toxicity

Speaker(s): Gisela Heffes (Rice University), Arndt Niebisch (Universität Wien)

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
What happens when toxicity breaks through its spatial containment?

How can a virus contaminate spheres, bodies, media, places and landscapes?

How do parasites, viruses or toxins penetrate, subvert, destabilize and/or promote and establish power structures and economic paradigms?

In this workshop, we will address these questions and highlight how the politics of parasites and toxins irritate and shape contemporary art and media.

Gisela Heffes (Rice University) will address uncontained toxicity in contemporary narratives of Argentina as a discourse of mutation and inoculation that appeals to a toxic semiotic while rendering bodies and spaces phantasmagoric specters.

Arndt Niebisch (Universität Wien) will revisit William S. Burroughs notion of the word virus and discuss how Burroughs subversive media guerilla is taken up by posthuman agents in social media networks.

Suggested Readings:
Arndt Niebisch: Feedback: Media Parasites and the Circuits of Communication (Dada and Burroughs)
https://www.semioticreview.com/ojs/index.php/sr/article/view/31/66

Gisela Heffes: Toxic Nature in Contemporary Argentine Narratives. Contaminated Bodies and Ecomutations, in Ecofiction and Ecorealities: Slow Violence and the Environment in Latin America and the Hispanic/Latino/a/Latinx World, eds. Ana Maria Mutis, Elizabeth Pettinaroli, and Ilka Kressner (New York: Routledge, 2019): 55-73.

Register in advance to receive the Zoom details.