read

A suite for damp rot

: first duet

With no beginning

            we discover our selves

flowers in the mud

brown clotted blood

comforting the upright stem. The petals

            of our pink mind

full of ethylene, beginning

            to turn to mush. The return journey

is usually easier.

Is that true? My eyes are still clear and round

as marbles. Light still passes through. My heart

still in the left cavity of all the cavity

            I am. Cave woman. A craggy depth

where my intestines should be.

            But how did you come here? If you’ve come

then come in from the cold. There’s coffee.

Hot liquid passing from stone to body, vessel

            to vessel. I see you now in the light of this fire,

your eyes like glass pebbles. How did you come to live

alone in this wet dark?

The floods were rising as acid rain fell, and smoke

            from fires, incense, and candles

rose up together toward the sky. I had no boat

            when the water came rushing in.

The white pain made me fold inward, turning my world

            inside out. When I woke I was here,

nestled next to my pink lungs, my trachea looming

            as though the trunk of a tree.

I had no boat after all, but I had a body.

Does it have a name?

A soup mush of blood, food, gunk, mucus, etc. A large soft mass, packed together with cellular cling wrap. All these little and medium parts hung and held in a big bag machine. Meat sack. Possessed and animated by a soul.

There it is, a lone figure making a faint slice across the landscape as it walks.

There it is. We watch not from above, but within.

: second duet

My body is due, limp amongst the worms. After a life on its feet, it arrives home on its back, eyes gazing ahead at the sky. Due to come alive, to fester and simmer as soup, putrid and desirous.

> It’s speaking. The screen lights up.

Hand still

on my heart.

> What does it say?

Not even an echo

from the inner room, no tender sound

from this blue, blue night.

But who am I who speaks, if not something

enclosed, tethered within this old machine?

The enzymes soften this gummy sack.

Are they the prickling feeling on my back?

> Mushrooms cluster and bloom there, forming a crowd. They are the common Lepiota, white and inedible.

Mush room. I feel its hyphae push in,

snowy strands tangling with my own. Mutual transplants

for a third body, another room.

These dead limbs turn lively in a new world—

hyphae, vessels, veins, capillaries, nerves—

bound, nested, in logic and in love.

Curious worms scale our uneven face. See: the shape of this world’s desires.

> Still its flesh continues its rot, its stench and slow juice. A sticky mucky pool between solid and liquid, thick and viscous, rich with nutrition. It would be hard to call this a body. It would be hard to give this a name.

Eye no longer see, only sense, feel. We

a hovering mist, a thinking cloud

tickled by the wind. A swarm that persists and is.

Our permanence is made of temporary assemblies

on repeat, extending a body

into some kind of forever. We think we can outlive

the future. Parts gather and part within

an us that is

regardless, regarding

one another as though we don’t survive the same world.

As though we don’t eat one another,

catabolizing and anabolizing. You consume me

and I nourish you. We recompose our bodies with the bodies

we’ve eaten: some part of me

is lettuce, is rice, is pig, plastic. Is your meat and marrow.

> I hear a buzz, a hum. It swarms up from the putrefied pool, growing louder, a swirling din of voices speaking all at once, forming one large sound. The beating wing of a sky-sized bird.

Who’s that speaking, a vibration in the mud?

> I hear you, a fold in the wind. I watch over your body, a nurse of the morgue.

Standing guard? For how long?

> A year now, not a long time at all.

Long enough for a body to dissolve and a new world to come into being.

> Long enough for an I to give way to a we. What are your names?

A swampy meat and mushroom stew. A spore cloud of tangled pathways that collect, disperse, distract, enable, trigger, block, destroy, build, repackage all at once. An indecipherable map of the world, a record that necessarily exists, formed from residue and imprints, and yet cannot be read.

> I see it on screen. Your liquid world.

There we are and you, companion

species of same surface

folded without end, an immortal strip

through which all is seen.

We scroll and find our fingers covered in oil,

in mud, in landfill sludge. Our rot

has bottom notes of city desperation, top notes

of curt urban rain. Pressing in

we smell sour-sweet skin. Its cellular parts

from some fish, some vegetation

digested, repackaged. Everything forms

to die to form again.

What form will you take next?

> A petal, a toothpick, a shoe mark on the ground.

More fleeting than this enduring hour.

> Slower than this urgent species. In my next life, I will not refuse my limits.

Will you give in to the world?

> Which part? I want to live in the muck

of my small human heart. Not cling.

Give this body its bloom and rot,

the forgiveness of dissolution

after the effort of being a whole, a whole

life lived. We get to be goo, to be

eaten, to simply pass through.

And then?

> We continue—                     by doing it again.

: manifesto (draft)

Wash enormity with care

Ant nest underneath salty sour soil

Soap water in the lake

Seed in mouth sprouting one morning

The blood of one land seeps into another

Eating a tree

Pus and oil, blood and soup

Fingernail nestled against the hairy root, white crescent moon

Sucking on fallen hairs

World fermenting chaos

We and we dissolved

Comma Toes

If my body is a cage, why does it have wings?

Pain is felt in places deeper than muscle.

Our hands snap open to reveal perfect walnuts within.

Roots sprout from my armpit, appendages of the lymphatic system.

Seeds are placed in little holes on my back. Every morning I bend over to water them.

The grilles are neither metal nor wood, but a slimy gel that sticks to my hands.

The tips of my hair begin to form buds.

In the mornings I find dew on the soles of my feet. Sand under my toe nails.

A sixth finger is pushing out next to my little finger.

Our teeth are really beads.

Why wings?

A smallish room, the walls a dark blue, the floor tiled with large yellow squares.
There’s even a ceiling fan, a white plate that hovers, half-there.
Someone upstairs is jumping. Maybe rope or aerobics.
We hear them land again above our heads.

You’re just standing there.

I move in here where the pain is.
I move as if my moving is a reading
of the future. But I can’t move and read
at the same time.

So I need you to stand there.
Tell me what you see.

The shoulder blade is also called the wing bone.

What do you see?
We can go backwards.

A worm pushes into the soil where a body sleeps on its side.
Water rains down from a shower head that tries to make up for the sky.

The wings are vestigial organs from an earlier version.
Nobody minds them pushing out there, between the shoulder blades.

Do we live here, hollow sphere in hollow sphere?
How far in are we nested? Is there an address?

Your feelers are twitching.

Am I flying?

What do you see?

A smallitch room, the walls a duck boole, the floor toiled with large yellow scratch.
There’s evil a sillying fin, a white plate that hooves, half-there.
Somewhere upstairs ease jumping. Maybe hope or arrow big.
We here them lend a gland above our hats.

We leave hear before the question wash foamed.
Before we ant heard dish room. Before there wuss a weird for us,
holo spear melting in holo spear.

Eye turn in the soil…

Empty Orchestra Heart

“I've acted out my life in stages
With ten thousand people watching
But we're alone now
And I'm singing this song to you”

— “A Song for You”, sung by Leon Russell, Donny Hathaway, The Carpenters, Ray Charles, Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, Michael Bublé et al.

 

The closure of Teo Heng’s[1] karaoke studios was a moment of palpable, albeit privileged, distress for Singaporeans like myself[2]. This was at the start of the pandemic, when public spaces were being barricaded off in swathes. With the suspension of services by all karaoke businesses, there was suddenly no public room for people to gather for hours of highly emotional, expressive, communal, and careless yet overinvested singing. A vital shape of social participation was cut off.

Eventually, a friend introduced me to Quanmin, a Chinese app where you could sing karaoke with friends and strangers in virtual rooms[3]. She started to “open” her singing room regularly, and a small group of her friends, including myself, started to haunt it. When she wasn’t online, I explored public rooms where hundreds of users across East Asia, Southeast Asia and even Australia and the U.S. lingered and took their turns to sing. Applause took the form of text messages and small gifts you could send using in-app currency.

Though karaoke rooms are technically “public”, karaoke evokes the private and intimate through its emotional performance as well as the commitment of its participants to the shared, loving promises of spectatorship and performance that make it possible.

Implicit promise 1: While you sing, I will listen and cheer for you, regardless of the quality of your singing.

Implicit promise 2: I will not ask about the emotions that arise in your song, unless they’ve already been brought up or you want to talk about them.

Implicit promise 3: If we can sing it together (i.e. we all know the lyrics to the song), we should! We will!

With these promises in place, another world with other possible selves is briefly opened up and realized. For those minutes, sliding along the spectrums of larger-than-life lovers, ghosts, vamps, softbois[4] and other characters, we also play as frontmen of rock bands, hypersexual pop stars and earnest singer-songwriters. We sample the position of celebrity singer with an audience, and the catharsis of public emotional release. By voicing the emotional arc and lyrics of a song, we borrow its script for our own desires without having to formulate our own words or narrative. And in doing so, we can air private truths without having to claim them as our own. “Karaoke” translates directly from the Japanese as “empty orchestra”. The instrumental of the song, sometimes complete with back-up vocals, presents an empty orchestra for you to fill with the tenor of your own voice, and then your own heart.

In March 2022, Monzoom.xyz, a platform for emergent art practices by artists Weixin Quek Chong and Kenneth Constance Loe, launched Total Eclipse Plumage. The programme comprises six duets of newly commissioned video art by twelve Singaporean and Singapore-based artists — “Late Bloomer” by Kai and Xafiér Yap; “Under Your Spell” by Ryan Benjamin Lee and nor; “Juliet’s Dinner” by Stephanie Jane Burt and Elsa Wong; “In the middle of July, I broke my finger” by Kenneth Constance Loe and Farizi Noorfauzi; “Earworms like ourSelf” by Weixin Quek Chong and Aran Atsuo; and “u kara-ok?” by Phoo Myet Che and Aqid Aiman. By playing with the format of karaoke videos and its attendant aesthetics, they explore notions of identity, translocal histories, pop culture, and the unravelling of often private emotions and intimacies.

Why karaoke? For Monzoom.xyz, their interest stems from both the pleasure of singing karaoke with friends, as well as a recognition of the “emotional resonances and intimate possibilities” within its aesthetics, “specifically in its simultaneous triad of image, text, and audience performance”. They add: “The very active position that consuming karaoke necessitates is also intriguing — it is engaged with in such a personal and vulnerable way as making a performance oneself, with one’s body as instrument.”

As for the decision to explore duets, Monzoom.xyz explains that they see collaboration as “a form of conversation, artistic exchange, and a generative force”. The karaoke duet is often “exhilaratingly unpredictable, with both parties’ improvised mannerisms and vocal inflections influencing each other in their live, unrehearsed enactment. It requires relational attunement and a high level of responsiveness to the other — valuable qualities in building interpersonal relationships.”

The Monzoom.xyz karaoke format, then, not only serves as a prompt for the production of art, but also the entwined possibility of new one-on-one relationships, resonances and shared narratives. They propose a vision of a world where both voices are “visibly integral, present in and influencing the outcome mutually — as opposed to a dominating and centred voice, to which all other voices might be hierarchically reduced to simply a backing score”.

Karaoke’s resonances and possibilities show signs of ripening within the duets. When asked about their process, Xafiér Yap mentions a “slowly budding vibe” that was explored with Kai, from which “a friendship bloomed.” Kenneth Constance Loe and Farizi Noorfauzi reveal that their lyrics were derived from a shared journal, while other artists touch upon the excitement of dreaming up and realising the various details of their videos — such as sets, costumes and visual effects — together.

While some videos felt new, most of them played for me like a warped or remixed version of the familiar. Where lyrics were provided on screen, I found myself mouthing along, already beginning to learn the score. Curious to learn more about these reimagined forms of the karaoke video, I sent Monzoom.xyz and the artists my questions. Just as in karaoke, their answers resound individually and together — providing an echoing and kaleidoscopic view of karaoke as a way of reciprocal sharing, dreaming and creating.

 

What is karaoke to you?

Stephanie Jane Burt: Moments spent with friends, screaming off-key into the microphone, late nights…

Aran Atsuo: A scary event where I can’t sing at all.

Farizi Noorfauzi: A wistful disregard of time and place in the warm company of people strangely united by the same melody, unabashedly singing through voice breaks and botched lyrics.

Elsa Wong: Emotion and memory. It resembles an exchange of feelings without words or sentences.

Ryan Benjamin Lee: It’s for indulging in all the bad songs from your childhood that you know all the lyrics to. I carry my Bluetooth karaoke mic to every party just in case we need an impromptu session.

Kai: A good time with friends. Singing karaoke has always felt like a good balance of nostalgia and present reality.

Aqid Aiman: Once you’re in that room, there’s an understanding that the songs you pick are songs that you have to get out; and the quality of the singing isn’t as important as the act of singing along and getting the emotions out.

nor: My late grandfather was unabashed about karaoke at home and sometimes the music could be heard from the first floor. You don’t need to be able to sing well, but you must be able to both express yourself and entertain.

Phoo Myet Che: On New Year’s Eve, my family and the families of my parents' friends would gather and belt out old Burmese songs. It’s deeply communal and I’m still impressed by how the most introverted uncle in the group delivered the perfect rendition of the Burmese version of “When You Say Nothing At All” by Ronan Keating.

 

What did you copy, reference, emulate, parody, borrow, sample, iterate, or derive?

KCL: Melody-wise, we were inspired by Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek.” I then found on the Voloco auto tune app an FX under the Modern Rap II category that was called “Congrats,” which according to the Voloco User Guide 2nd Edition (6.0) is “a chordal sound with chorus effect, inspired by the vocals of Post Malone’s ‘Congratulations’.” That was how the idea to approximate that song for the bridge came about.

EW & SJB: We loved the mood of Nobuhiko Obayashi’s horror film HOUSE (1977). The DIY treatment of the film effects and the colourful landscape contrasted against absurd humour. Another reference is Jan Svankmajer’s ALICE (1988), where we particularly loved the language of the props, which fit well with a doll house visual.

A Aiman: We were very influenced by the Tokyo Picnic Club — founded in 2002 to protest the lack of urban public space in Japan[5]. “Public” spaces are necessary to discover ourselves, hide away from reality, and be inspired, which is why, I think, the past two years have been so hard.

n: While we were deeply inspired by the early 2000s pop-punk/emo wave, our fashion and visual inspiration came from 2020s reiterations of such aesthetics. We looked at Blink 182’s “First Date” and Doja Cat’s “Bottom Bitch” music videos, Princess Nokia’s pop punk album A Girl Cried Red, even emulated Willow Smith’s cadence on her track “Gaslighter”. We were also inspired by punk zines and propaganda posters. 

R: I pulled from German-American animator Oskar Fischinger’s series of animated spirals from the 1920s. I also looked at many late 2000s music videos that had very grunge collage styles but were also clearly very digital.

A Atsuo: I copied the original DJ Ryson[6] mashup- for the structure of the backing track. Their mashup arrangement was really well done. The concept of the video was copied from ants.

WQC: We sampled a lot of extracts and lines from various hits and artists, which are listed in our write-up about the work. Apart from layering these voices into the sound, we also ended up composing a separate text piece out of collaging lines of lyrics from the songs we sampled.

 

Who did you perform and/or sing as?

KCL: I performed vague impersonations of Sia and Imogen Heap, as well as two blink-and-you-miss-it semblances of Doja Cat in “MOOO!”. Farizi was mainly performing as himself and we thought this juxtaposition could foreground some of the interesting tensions and projections that undergirded our long-distance collaboration.

n: I’ve always fantasised about being the lead of an all-female screamo band, so this performance was very much in line with who I was from ages 14 to 16.

Fashion-wise, I was channelling both Doja Cat and Princess Nokia. I am Nicki Minaj’s daughter through and through though. It’s in my mannerisms, my facial expressions and hand movements, as well as our lyrics.

RBL: I had no one in mind, this is just my true authentic self.

 

Tell me why (ain’t nothin’ but a heartache).

Monzoom.xyz: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gIdIvbUmtiHHndXNnhG8_cOK1Z5GQX2b/view?usp=sharing

 

---

[1] Arguably the most beloved karaoke chain in Singapore.

[2] Benson Ang, Karaoke chain Teo Heng may soon close half of its 14 outlets; Manekineko also feeling the stress, The Straits Times, 2020

[3] Available on Apple App Store and Google Play

[4] Iona David, The A to Z of Softbois, Vice, 2019

[5] Chris Michael, Can 'guerrilla picnics' end Tokyo's 50-year war on public space?, The Guardian, 2019

[6] https://djryson.wixsite.com/home

The Horse's Mouth

Visions in a dream. Fragments.[1]

Author’s Note:

This is a semi-historical piece of speculative fiction, written from the point of view of Zhang Qian[2], an explorer and envoy of the Han Dynasty[3]. Given how far back in history it attempts to reach, even the facts are unstable and often impenetrable. Language will inevitably struggle and find itself anachronistic. And so, like many (faithful and unfaithful) accounts of history, this is an assemblage of dreams – Zhang Qian’s, the historians’, and my own.

1.

We are setting out to meet the Yuezhi[4]. If all goes well, we should return in two to three years. With this alliance, victory against the Xiongnu[5] will become a possibility. There have also been rumours of a legendary breed of horses, which are reported to sweat blood when they run[6]. Unlike our horses too weak to take even the weight of a soldier, blood-sweating horses are reported to be invincible, able to take the weight of ten men at once. No one seems to know where to find them. Perhaps this journey will also be a good chance to acquire information about them. Our army would be unstoppable with such superior horses.

Gan Fu[7] will be coming with our party of a hundred as our guide. Being one of the Xiongnu, his knowledge of the area will be useful. Enslavement seems to have tamed him, and he appears by all counts to be loyal to the Emperor. If he shows any sign of defecting, I shall kill him.

The journey will be long, but I doubt it will be harder than the battles I’ve fought before. The difficulty will lie elsewhere, in the bargaining of our freedoms.

2.

We leave tomorrow. Goodbye for now, dear home. The Han Dynasty is a land of flowers, beautiful as the perched herons that await its full bloom. Our landscape will grow to fill the world.

5.

The difficult terrain is becoming familiar and manageable. Our rations appear to be more than sufficient, and the mood of our party is cautious but exuberant. Many of our party are excited to explore beyond the confines of our kingdom. But then again, all will be our kingdom in time.

I am beginning to learn the names of these men, many of whom I suspect would be braver than myself when in battle. Men who will not back down against enemies. Meanwhile, Gan Fu ensures that every man has a share of dinner before he eats, and listens closely when I speak. A worthy guide, who is earning my trust.

9.

It’s been some time since Gan Fu and I were captured by the Xiongnu. How much time, I do not know. Our hundred has been murdered down to two, a partnership instead of a party.

I finally convinced Wuwei Chanyu[8] to grant me access to my belongings, which, I argued, were primarily paper and coins. (The same can’t be said of Gan Fu, who was to protect us on this journey. Nonetheless, I am surprised the Xiongnu do not welcome him, one of their own.) Which is how I am writing, after also asking for a brush, ink, and some time alone. They trust me at least this much.

Wuwei Chanyu and his advisors did, however, laugh at my ban liang[9]. “Since you can’t use them here anyway, perhaps you can convince us to melt them down for you, to make knife money[10],” one advisor said. His grin looked sour. I kept my head bowed and asked to keep the ban liang in memory of my home. “You’d rather keep worthless memories than usable currency,” Wuwei Chanyu remarked. “Keep them. They’re yours.”

I have been struggling to sleep. The air here smells different, and my body can sense it, never relaxes enough to sleep soundly. Last night, after I had lain for perhaps an hour, something called me to my feet. I went over to my pouch of ban liang, and held it between my fingers. I walked over to the open window (yes, they’ve granted me this, too) and looked at the bright, white moon. Then, I turned the coin over in my palm, examining its ridges under the light.

After some time, I returned to bed, still holding the ban liang, still unable to fall asleep. My restlessness grew frustrated. It was in this state of thoughtless agitation that I slid the coin into my mouth. Having been warmed by my hands, it now grew hot on my tongue. Saliva began to collect around it. When I swallowed, there was a slight taste of rust. The metallic flavour became a feeling; the inside of my mouth felt like an entity separate from me, an attachment, an added appendage, a room I had just wandered into.

I slipped the tip of my tongue through the square centre hole. Then I stuck my tongue out of my mouth, but it was too short for me to see the ban liang clearly. It struck me, as I lay there, that it must look a little like a mountain with a ring of clouds near the peak.

When I woke this morning, with the coin still in my mouth, I felt perfectly rested. This is a sign, I believe, that I will find my way home.

10.

I told Gan Fu what Wuwei Chanyu and his advisor had said about our coins. We were in my cramped quarters. It was dusk.

“They weren’t wrong,” I said. “We don’t know how long we will be held here. Perhaps some knife money would be useful, especially since our robes are growing tattered.”

Gan Fu’s gaze made me attentive. Reaching into his silk bundle (after being returned empty to Gan Fu, its soft gold shine had been muted by rough use), he pulled out a bag of medicinal herbs.

“How many ban liang does a bag of herbs like this cost?” he asked.

“About two.”

“Where have you kept your ban liang?”

I unlocked a small drawer. Taking a few coins out, I held them towards Gan Fu. He took two ban liang, his fingers grazing against my palm as he did so. (Unlike his demeanour, they were soft and cool.) The weight in my hands decreased precisely, and I curled my fingers around the remainder.

Tossing and catching my coins in one hand, Gan Fu placed the bag of herbs on my desk with the other.

“Thank you for your purchase, sir,” he said.

I looked back into the drawer at my stash of coins, then back at Gan Fu. His smile carried mischief, and I found myself smiling back.

11.

We’re persisting in this game, buying and selling between us, playing merchant and peasant in turns. Our goods are varied and unselective: yesterday, they were potatoes and a small knife to peel them with; the day before, we exchanged a charred pot and a single, stale carrot. Once, we even made a joke of a knife money piece I’d found on the street, deciding that one was not even worth twenty ban liang.

“You’ll need to collect at least nineteen more,” Gan Fu said with a laugh.

I’ve noticed something. Ever since we started this game, I’ve experienced a strange, burning sensation in my chest, which starts faintly in the morning and builds through each day. My breath grows short as any expansion of my chest grows impossibly painful. If it goes on for too long, I start holding my breath for periods of time, wondering if I could carry on like this forever, airless but alive.

It’s when I meet Gan Fu, and when our hands exchange the ban liang and goods, that I feel the pain finally abate.

“Are you ill?” he asked, pressing a hand to my neck, then reaching for my wrist. Gan Fu had a close friend, a royal physician, who had taught him a few things. Frowning, he attempted to read my pulse. What did it say to him?

Perhaps that I had begun to sleep every night, rather than just occasionally, with ban liang in my mouth. Perhaps that I had begun to feel this hunger even in the day, and it made me nervous whenever I was the buyer instead of the seller in our game. Perhaps that it, my pulse, was racing because of his cold, calm fingers.

973.

It’s been ten New Years spent in this place. This year, the festivities are particularly extravagant, and the new normal of the Xiongnu is drunkenness. Tonight, the final night of celebrations, we will make another attempt at escape. As always, Gan Fu will lead us. He has proven himself faithful.

It would be a miracle if Gan Fu, my wife, child, and myself all make it out. The route we’re taking is well-guarded, and our party is large. Still, despite our slim chances, I have the audacity of hope. For the sake of Emperor Wu[11] and our dead companions, we must survive.

Even the sky turns red above the Xiongnu. Now, more than ever, I find they resemble horses. Their faces long and muscular, their nostrils flaring when they grow agitated with drink. Their hair flows untied and their steps land like hooves. And one cannot forget the flash of their large, perfect teeth. Perhaps when we defeat them, we might ride them through the city. Perhaps they, too, will sweat blood.

Emperor Wu must be waiting. So am I. None of us will sleep tonight, in case an opportunity arises in the dark. The exit lies in the north. If they spot us, we’ll have to run faster than horses.

974.

We had to leave my wife and child behind. There is no time to mourn, and perhaps there is nothing to be mourned at all. Despite our familial ties, they are descendants of the Xiongnu, at home where they are. Can I say that I loved her? I think so, at least briefly. But I am glad it is Gan Fu I have been left with.

Now, our journey toward the Yuezhi must resume. It will take Gan Fu some days to ascertain the direction we should take next. In the meantime, I should gather my wits and make the most of my grubby attire. Now, I am no longer a captive, and must once again become an envoy, an officer of the Han Dynasty.

Gan Fu was smart to steal supplies from the Xiongnu right before we left. The food rations will keep us fed for some time, even though we have little shelter from rain and wild animals. We mustn’t waste time. Tomorrow, we need to find more food, and move quickly through this desert.

977.

First desert, now snow. Both ill. Delirious. My head burned through the night, and I thought I heard the sound of hooves at my door. I felt certain that Emperor Wu had arrived on a horse to free us from the Xiongnu.

His face was flushed with speed, his eyes gleaming like obsidian. His hands were hard and icy as he gripped mine. He turned expectantly toward Gan Fu, whose hair had been freed of its bun, and seemed to be growing steadily longer.

“Are you ready?” Emperor Wu asked. A gurgling noise came from mouth as he spoke. His nostrils flared even though his breathing appeared even. Was he panting? A faint neighing could be heard. It seemed to come from somewhere further away.

The Emperor’s cold hands were beginning to affect me. My body shivered incessantly as Gan Fu and I climbed onto his horse, a tight fit that pressed us against one another to keep from falling. Gan Fu’s hair had grown so long that it covered my lap and mixed with the horse’s tail. Rather than functioning as four different individuals (horse and humans), we seemed to form a large animal. A monster.

As we rode out of the Xiongnu’s territory, the distant neighing grew louder. The Emperor’s horse merely grunted softly. It must have been a blood-sweating horse, since it could carry three men. But no blood appeared as it galloped forward. We seemed to be moving towards the neighing.

As we got closer, the Emperor’s horse lost its mind, or perhaps it simply lost patience. It began to resist its reigns, throwing us off balance on its back. The Emperor yelled for it to stop, but to no avail. The horse swung around in circles in an attempt to throw us off. As I lost my grip on Gan Fu and fall to the ground, everything before my eyes – earth, sky, and air – quaked.

978.

I’ve come to, back in the cave with Gan Fu, lying on my back. My arms and legs feel badly bruised. Gan Fu thrashes next to me, unconscious, in the middle of what appeared to be a fit. His forehead burning hot. He mumbles softly, his hands clenching and unclenching by his ribcage.

His colourless complexion frightens me. If one must be stranded, it helps to have a companion. For now, you will keep me company while I attempt to save my friend.

I poured a little bit of water into his mouth, but I can’t tell if it makes a difference. I searched our belongings for other options and found our ban liang, which jangles in a small purse. I’m going to slip one of them into Gan Fu’s mouth.

His lips have shut the coin in. And whether a result of medicine or coincidence, the fit seems to have ended. But I am no physician. Even if this were a sign of imminent death, I would not know better. I wonder if Qin Shi Huang[12] knew when he established the ban liang, that it’d be placed into the mouths of men?

Now, I must lay back down, for I am nauseous. There is little I can do for Gan Fu. I will sleep for a while, and hopefully, soon, find myself awake.

995.

We made it to the Yuezhi with the help of a Dayuan[13] guide. It was pure luck that we arrived in Dayuan and received aid. The Kangju region[14] was also an easy passageway, thanks to the guide’s sharp knowledge. (Gan Fu seems little wary of him. Perhaps it is jealousy.)

The Yuezhi show no interest in our proposition. They are too far from danger to share our fear, too prosperous to be tempted by the wealth of the Xiongnu, too comfortable in peace to be drawn to war. They are, they’ve argued, also too far from the Han Dynasty for our alliance to prove valuable in opposing the Xiongnu. I will speak to their leader again in a few days, when we have become a more familiar presence. After we have completed our task (which has now taken over a decade), Gan Fu and I will finally return home. To the arms of our people.

Now, I must share something strange about the Yuezhi. Of course, they have been polite and respectful for the duration of our stay, and appear by all counts to be civil, lawful people. However, included within their standard currency money, which like ours is made of bronze, silver, and gold, is a kind of paper money.

I asked a local about this odd addition to their currency, and learnt that it has only been recently introduced. But people are beginning to use them in the same way they use coins. Can one trust substitutes for real weight and value? Perhaps the peace and affluence of the Yuezhi makes them more trusting, more gullible.

1003.

No luck convincing the Yuezhi. Frustrating. I will, however, be able to explore the surrounding lands. My description of silk also excited the Yuezhi leader and people, which we might be able to use to our advantage.

Gan Fu and I will need to leave soon. Much time has been wasted on this journey, and I would like to return to the Emperor. We continue to sleep with coins in our mouths. It is something we laugh about, an unsuccessful attempt to hide our longing to be home. (I have not told Gan Fu that I now keep a ban liang in my mouth nearly all the time, except for meals and when he is with me.)

1011.

The Yuezhi leader has proven to be less generous than we hoped. When we asked for supplies to make the journey home, he asked for payment in exchange. After the Xiongnu’s capture, Gan Fu and I have little to offer them, only what the Xiongnu decided had no value: our ban liang. The leader laughed, but I expressed that our coins could be melted down to make more of the Yuezhi’s own.

“We have no need for more,” he said. “Perhaps they can be used as a kind of promise instead. But we will need something else from you, something that actually costs you.”

I asked him what he had in mind.

“Your hair,” he said. “You will give us your coins, and each a lock of your hair. One of my men will do the cutting. In exchange, you will come back with silk for us.”

What a confusing proposal! I told him, politely, as much.

“We will give you something valuable too,” he said. “Some of our own money, the paper that you’ve asked so much about. If you bring it back to us along with your silk, we will reward you greatly.”

I looked at Gan Fu, who looked, as always, uncommonly calm. He turned his eyes to the leader, and then back to me.

“It appears,” he whispered, “to be an empty exchange for both parties. What is of value to one is of none to the other, except the supplies that he promises to give us.”

“Yes,” I replied. “But he also asks for our hair!”

Gan Fu smiled. “It may feel humiliating, but unlike our lives, hair can grow back.”

Which was a convincing argument. I told the Yuezhi leader that we would accept his proposal.

1423.

Emperor Wu was confused by the Yuezhi’s paper money, but he welcomed us back with no little joy. Although we failed in our mission, our observations will guide our next step. For one, the possibility of using silk to our advantage pleases him. Gan Fu and I have also managed to keep the gaps in our hair hidden from view.

We are now considering an alliance with the Wusun[15], who might prove more agreeable than the Yuezhi.

2020.

San zhu[16] doesn’t feel right on the tongue; it is far too light compared to ban liang. Now that the latter is becoming disused, it seems I must store some away for good. These coins will soon be useless for anything other than my private pleasure.

I spoke to a friend of mine, a blacksmith, under the pretext of making a special coin for Emperor Wu. It is a gift that will memorialize his reign and commemorate the progress we have made in our economy. I requested a ban liang coin. Specifically, I asked for him to make it in silver rather than bronze, and for it to be double in diameter.[17] He was rather confused, since it would be, as he repeated, “very valuable but of no use.” Eventually, he gave in, and asked no more questions. (I was, after all, paying him a large amount for it.)

It arrived at noon yesterday, in a silk bundle. I waited until night. When all that could be heard was silence, I retrieved the bundle and set it down on my desk. I recall the moonlight being strangely bright at that moment. It gave everything a colourlessness. Even my untied hair looked silvery, rather than black.

As I peeled back the silk, alone in my quarters, I could not help it: I reached for the perfectly-made coin, pinched it between two fingers, and raised it to my mouth, where my tongue was outstretched, waiting.

---

[1] From the epigraph of “Kubla Khan,” a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. See Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Khan,” Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43991/kubla-khan

[2] Ulrich Theobald, “Zhang Qian 張騫,” ChinaKnowledge.de, December 1, 2011. http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Han/personszhangqian.html If you able to read Chinese (Simplified), see also “张骞出使西域的意义有哪些？张骞出使西域的影响”, 趣历史, October 27, 2015. http://www.qulishi.com/news/201510/49198.html

[3] “The Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) was one of the longest of China’s major dynasties. In terms of power and prestige, the Han Dynasty in the East rivalled its almost contemporary Roman Empire in the West.” Cristian Violatti, “Han Dynasty,” Ancient History Encyclopedia, May 27, 2013. https://www.ancient.eu/Han_Dynasty/

[4] A nomadic people of Central Asia who are believed to have been Indo-Europeans. The first detailed account of the Yuezhi is in Records of the Grand Historian, or Shiji (史記) by Sima Qian, which describes Zhang Qian’s visit circa 129 BCE. See “The Han Histories”, Silk Road Seattle, September 24, 2003. https://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/hhshu/hou_han_shu.html#sec13 Also Ulrich Theobald, “Yuezhi 月氏, Tokharians,” ChinaKnowledge.de, November 28, 2011. http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Altera/yuezhi.html

[5] The Xiongnu were a nomadic people whose military conquests antagonized the Han Dynasty. Their very name, given by the Han, reflects this: it translates roughly as “fierce slave”(匈奴). It has been proposed that the Xiongnu linked to the Huns due to similarities in the etymology of their names, but this is disputed. “Virtual Art Exhibition - Xiongnu,” Silk Road Seattle, March 8, 2002.

[6] The Ferghana or Akhal-Teke horse, which was literally called “sweats blood” horse (汗血马) in Chinese. Yuko Tanaka, Sonoko Sato, and Makiko Onishi, “The Horses of the Steppe: The Mongolian Horse and the Blood-Sweating Stallions,” Digital Silk Road – Digital Archives of Cultural Heritage, March 16, 2010. Trans. Suijin Ra and adapted by Leanne Ogasawara. http://dsr.nii.ac.jp/rarebook/02/index.html.en Also “Heavenly horses – legend of the origin,” Advantour. https://www.advantour.com/uzbekistan/legends/heavenly-horses.htm

[7] Gan Fu was a Xiongnu who had been captured in a war, who served as Zhang Qian’s guide. Dale A. Johnson, Lost Churches on the Silk Road (United States: New Sinai Press, 2013), 21. Also John Man, “War Over the Wall,” The Great Wall: The Extraordinary Story of China’s Wonder of the World (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2009), page numbers unavailable.

[8] Wuwei was the chanyu or ruler of the Xiongnu Empire circa 114-105 BCE. There are little to no English language sources that detail his life. If you are able to read Chinese (Simplified), please see 杨献平, “第二十二章 武力巡边与西域之争，”《匈奴帝国》(Beijing: Beijing Book Co. Inc., 2009), page numbers unavailable. Also 水木森, 《一本書讀懂匈奴》(Taipei: 海鴿文化出版圖書有限公司, 2018), 275.

[9] Ban liang (半两) is a type of coin currency first introduced by Emperor Qin Shi Huang. It was “a round coin with square hole in the middle”, which made it easy to string together and carry around. It occurred primarily in bronze. Marilyn Shea, “Ban Liang Coins Warring States Period 战国Shaanxi History Museum 陕西历史博物馆,” China Experience, March 2010. http://hua.umf.maine.edu/China/Xian/Shaanxi_History/pages/124_History_Museum.html  Also “Chin Ban-liang (bronze currency of the Chin Dynasty),” Digital Taiwan. http://culture.teldap.tw/culture/index.php?option=com_content&id=475

[10] A knife-shaped currency which was introduced in the Zhou Dynasty (c. 1046-356 BC). Mary Ellen Snodgrass, Coins and Currency: An Historical Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. (North Carolina: McFarland, 2019), 54 and 355. Also “coin; knife-money,” British Museum. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/C_1996-0217-239

[11] Emperor Wu was the seventh emperor of the Han Dynasty, who ruled China for half a century. Urich Theobald, “Emperor Han Wudi 漢武帝 Liu Che 劉徹,” ChinaKnowledge.de, March 8, 2011. http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Han/personshanwudi.html Also “Wudi Emperor of the Han Dynasty (156- 87 BC), Story of Han Dynasty EmperorWudi Emperor of the Han Dynasty (156- 87 BC), Story of Han Dynasty Emperor,” China Highlights. https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/china-history/wudi-emperor.htm

[12] Qin Shi Huang was emperor of the Qin Dynasty, and “creator of the first unified Chinese empire”. Claudius Cornelius Müller, “Qin Shi Huang,” Encyclopædia Britannica, November 20, 2019. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Qin-Shi-Huang

[13] Dayuan was a part of the Ferghana Basin or Valley, which is now spread across Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan in Central Asia. It was home of the aforementioned Ferghana or Akhal-Teke horse. Huping Shang, The Belt and Road Initiative: Key Concepts (New York: Springer, 2019), 71. Also Ulrich Theobald, “Dayuan 大宛,” ChinaKnowledge.de, November 26, 2011. http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Altera/dayuan.html

[14] The Kangju were “a federation of various tribes whose ruler resided in the city of Beitian”. They lived “in the area of modern Kazakhstan along the banks of River Syr Darya.” Ulrich Theobald, “Kangju 康居,” ChinaKnowledge.de, November 25, 2011. http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Altera/kangju.html Also “China Focus: Archaeological cooperation along ancient Silk Road yields encouraging results,” Xinhua, May 20, 2020. http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-05/20/c_139072136.htm

[15] The Wusun “were a nomad people living in the region of the Dzunghar Basin in the northwest of modern Xinjiang.” Ulrich Theobald, “Wusun 烏孫,” ChinaKnowledge.de,  December 8, 2011. http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Altera/wusun.html  Also “Kingdom of the Far East – Wusun,” The History Files. https://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsFarEast/AsiaWusun.htm

[16] A type of coinage which replaced the ban liang. “A reference list of 5000 years of Chinese coinage,” Numista, June 13, 2013. https://en.numista.com/numisdoc/a-reference-list-of-5000-years-of-chinese-coinage-97.html

[17] In the 1950s, a number of ban liang were found near Xi’an, one of which was unusually large, heavy, and made of silver. See Gary Ashkenazy, “State of Qin Silver Banliang Coin,” Primal Trek, April 29, 2015. http://primaltrek.com/blog/2015/04/29/state-of-qin-silver-banliang-coin/ The auction notice for the silver ban liang is also available in Chinese (Simplified): “秦 银质半两大钱,” 雅昌艺术品雅昌拍卖网. https://auction.artron.net/paimai-art5093530920/

Touch Skin

Dear ____,

The body is a flesh-suit for consciousness. What have you been made conscious of in the past year, as the world entered pandemic panic mode and existing inequalities imploded in nearly every country? As Naomi Shihab Nye wrote “So much of any year is flammable,” but I don’t think most people expected such great and enduring flames.

The physical body is a vessel with a specific interface - the skin, which stretches over ears, nose, eyes, mouth, fingers, toes, knees,... A sensing and sensuous surface with depth. There is space underneath against which the world - an object, a sound, another body - can press. Can leave a mark. Can create a feeling so rapturous that you’ll never be the same again. This remains true for the posthuman body, even as its tendrils and appendages and interfaces continue to extend our systems and surfaces ad infinitum.

During the pandemic, our skin has become particularly visible as a node of reception and transmission. Its natural state may be described as open: open to affection, to violence, to virus. Unable to switch off this interface at will, we’ve had to withdraw from one another to keep us safe from ourselves. We’ve had to dull orifices like our mouths by masking them, speaking less. As with other “ongoing and irrefutable ways in which we are all subject to one another”, affection, violence and virus are wrapped up with each other; in order to be open to one, one often has to be open to all.

Withdrawn from public space, we became conscious of our bodies as conduits for contact and proximity, and, by extension, intimacies we may have taken for granted. Turning to our networked bodies, we were made conscious of their extents and limits, their enmeshed potential for intimacy and loneliness. It seems that more commonly-used technologies, such as Zoom, are not (yet) able to replace the immediacy of the body. The body, then, is still the most complex and nuanced sensory interface and assemblage toward which user-centric technologies often aspire.

Networked Bodies, an exhibition curated by independent art space Supernormal, presents counter offers to our loneliness through a series of telematic experiments in intimacy. In doing so, it recasts our conceptions of technology and its interfaces, and troubles the commonplace demonisation and dismissal of new technologies as anti-social or non-biological.

A good place to begin is Brian den Hartog’s A Dialogue with Cyberspace, which expresses the fog of confusion that rises from the gap between our physical state of being and our online selves. Following my initial premise of the primacy of the body and embodied experience, the body is also our first site of consciousness and existence, a site where a self might emerge or be conjured into being. Opening and closing with visions of a swarm, den Hartog’s film emits a sense of dread or terror at the distracted posthuman being. It points to the body and flesh as “an instrument capable of feeling,” where “one[ness]” is located in physical togetherness, and the relocation of personhood into the digital and virtual space as a kind of devastation. The narrator says, with an uncertain tone but pointed choice of words: “I don’t understand why you surrender parts of yourself to fit into this system that lies beyond your physical understanding.” Yet, prior to this moment, it already suggests one possible reason - the desire for permanence and immortality.

Unlike our online selves, our physical existences are finite, mortal. “In a body that knows a past, [we] feel how time passes by. [...] [We] wonder how it is to be eternal.” A small robot guides elderly wheelchair-bound bodies through physical exercises. Its body instructs our body. Its body is a proxy for our body. Similarly, our social media accounts, our second body, will probably outlive us. This avatar, like the plastic bags in our landfills, might go on forever.

“We find each other in a single movement and disappear in a body that we will never fully comprehend.” We have come full circle, but not quite. Perhaps this line harks back to the opening of this essay, which is that we are ultimately tethered to what bani haykal calls “our wetware”. However, there is also uncertainty as to what the “body” here now means. Which body - physical or digital? Perhaps both, or all - since we each take on so many selves across social, physical, and virtual planes. Caught between selves, each existence becomes itself a swarm, each particle responding to those adjacent to it, but “[n]ot a single one can grasp the group as a whole.”

In Paul Sermon’s Telematic Dreaming, the body’s sensorial integrity is hijacked by immersive technology, which allows two bodies to bypass physical distance to “share” a bed through the mediation of live videoconferencing. Sermon explains that here, “the sense of sight [is] exchanged with the sense of touch”; while you cannot touch the other body, the immersive visual of seeing them next to you causes a kind of trip in your body. Intimacy feels possible like this. Beyond the meeting of two people, Telematic Dreaming might also be seen as the symbolic meeting of the virtual and physical body, with a tenderness and intimacy that might soothe the grief of den Hartog’s film.

Interestingly, the technological core of Telematic Dreaming is neither videoconferencing nor live projection. For Sermon, “[t]he bed was the most psychological, charged and complex piece of ‘technology’ in that whole piece”, an “interface that function[s]... as a portal between the human avatars we control inside the matrix and ourselves.” We are reminded that the word “technology”, despite its associations with man-made metallic devices and, more generally, cold, masculine, non-human qualities, is rooted in notions of art, skill, craft, and systematic methods. It is less a material presence and aesthetic than a kind of method and practice by which something comes into being. Perhaps a useful word is “assemblage”, which has been employed in new materialism. In Telematic Dreaming, by assembling the untouchable yet visually-immersive transmission (the live video) with the body-soaked material object (the bed), the former becomes real-er to the sensing body. A symbiotic relationship exists between the two components, which alters the way they exist to/for each other, and then to/for us.

The home as a site of intimate possibilities continues with Sarah Choo Jing’s Zoom, Click, Waltz, a voyeuristic vision of strangers who we watch through their windows. Following the provocation of Telematic Dreaming, might we consider the window the technological interface of Zoom, Click, Waltz? It’s slightly different since, unlike the bed of Telematic Dreaming, there isn’t a physical window and space in the work. Instead, there’s an additional layer there of the camera and the eye/I that looks through it.

I am reminded of the intimacy of a gaze, look, or stare, and how, as Dan Nixon derives from the work of philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “[i]ntimacy, connection and compassion rest on our perceiving one another: [...] the felt sense of this embodied, sensitive and vulnerable being before me.” Much of popular discourse now is trained upon taking apart our eyes/Is, to examine the social, political, and economic biases that are (re)produced through it. This is an important commitment. Yet, alongside this unlearning, we must continue to commit our gazes, to look closely and tenderly at one another.

While den Hartog’s film thinks of the body with solemn existentialism, Choy Ka Fai’s Pl a y .Gh o s t .Pl a y .Go d 裝 神弄鬼娛樂 is playful and irreverent, emerging as. a madcap cast of Internet personalities that riff off religious figures Nezha, Ongon, and Dao Mau. Reimagined as YouTubers, these deities cover K-Pop songs, play mobile games and attempt to make TikTok content. Crucially, from their mannerisms to hairstyles and voices, they are infantilised: they sulk and whine and participate in Internet culture in naive and seemingly uninhibited ways. Their high-pitched, high-energy behaviour is larger than life; it is rooted in thesanitised space of the cutesy, harmless, and funny.

The exhilarating absurdity of juxtaposing religious figures and these high-energy, high-pitched performances draws attention to the affective and social conventions of Taiwanese YouTube culture. However, though they are culturally-specific, infantilized Nezha, Ongon, and Dao Mau serve as a microcosm of YouTuber culture in general, where developing a simplified version of your personhood for popular consumption is standard operating procedure.

Here, the body is both preoccupied and pre-occupied - enthralled by an endless stream of memetic content, as well as inhabited in advance by religious myths and familiar Internet archetypes. Perhaps you can call it possessed. Like a medium whose body becomes a temporary vessel for a spirit, the YouTuber’s body is possessed by another, by an other whose existence comes to precede its own.

If Choy’s work emphasises the element of attention in an attention economy, Sudhee Liao’s Going Live: Enigmatic Perception considers the economic nature of net-based interactions. Taking the form of a dance performance streamed on Instagram Live, it invites viewers to offer prompts through the livestream chat function, which then direct the dancer’s movements. The involvement of the invisible viewer thus becomes relatively immediate, as interactions are incorporated real-time into the performance. For Liao, this is a way of “interweaving supply and demand, the virtual and the real, thereby exploring their similarities and differences”. And indeed, something about Going Live: Enigmatic Perception carries echoes of the market, as the performer also poses questions in the chat, such as “How old do you think I am?”, “Would you date me?” and “Rate me on a scale of 1-10.” She dances between the positions of subject and object, product and producer. 

Here, the performer’s body is the site of bargain and exchange, underscoring the question of autonomy. What does this topography of power look like? While the performer leaves herself open to the public prompts and comments of the audience, she still retains control over the prompts she takes on, as well as how long this open connection lasts (the livestream). The degrees of separation made possible by the Internet provides a kind of protection, and preserves, to a considerable extent, the performer’s autonomy even as she offers herself up to the audience.

The implicit link between autonomy and choreography in Liao’s work is made explicit in Jonathan Chomko’s www.grindruberairbnb.exposed, which “leads participants in choreographed performance”. As “an exploration of the networks ability to guide movement through physical space - the name concatenates three popular digital services which perform acts of choreography on a mass scale.”

By each accessing the URL on a smartphone, participants are instructed to perform pre choreographed movement and gestures. And as each person does their part, somewhat oblivious to the others, a synchronised group performance plays out for those watching. In a way, choreography is gamified, and the quiet ease with which technology can dictate our movements becomes obvious.

This is especially evident with the phone - a device most of us use 24/7 - as a physical collaborator; for while they occasionally need to sense each others’ bodies, the participants’ eyes remain more or less trained on their screens throughout the sequence. So watching them is a little like watching ourselves in our everyday choreographies, navigating the world with our faces angled toward our phone screens. www.grinderuberairbnb.exposed makes clear that to participate is to perform, and to be a user is to be used in turn. This mutual choreographing underscores a symbiotic relationship between technology and us, where we are always negotiating control over the performance that arises.

Interestingly, and as Chomko himself expresses, technology’s control over human action inwww.grinderuberairbnb.exposed also facilitates collective action. While the participants’ movements are dictated and timed by the instructions, this leads them to move together without prior rehearsal. How can we, like Chomko has, use networks to bring people together in spontaneous, pleasurable, and intimate ways? Perhaps we can use them to invent new ways of meeting and nurturing intimacy. www.grinderuberairbnb.exposed is a kind of prototype, for choreographing socio political movements we could perform together.

Alecia Neo takes on this proposition in Care Index and Between Earth and Sky, projects which make visible everyday acts of care. Turning away from the abstract, both works are rooted in application, and the specific contexts and rituals that govern our everyday life.

The former is a repository of gestures of care submitted by the public. These rituals, collected and shared, offer a point of reference or guidance for our own acts of embodied care, while uniting us through our shared need for care. I am reminded again of Judith Butler’s proposition of “precariousness as a generalized condition”, where a common denominator of need and vulnerability is offered as a universalising instrument for existence. Of course, given the nature of Care Index as a repository, its contents are determined by its contributors; I expect differences and nuances to inevitably surface, and for contributions to form a repository which conveys not only the universal but also the plural and uneven.

Between Earth and Sky, on the other hand, draws our attention specifically to the lives of caregivers who look after persons with mental illness. The kite forms a key symbol and proxy in this project, where photographs of the caregivers and their loved ones’ clothing are attached to kites and flown. To Neo, these kites act as “surrogates taking flight where their bodies cannot yet go.” In a sense, then, they are not unlike the virtual avatars we use to traverse imaginary and alternative worlds; they allow us to network our selves beyond the reality in which we physically live.

Ultimately, the provocations of Networked Bodies invite us to turn away from the screen as default interface, and to expand our conception of technology into one defined more as method and approach than specific forms of hardware and software, or a certain aesthetic. It makes clear that our existing technologies are not necessarily anti-social or non-biological; placed within meaningful assemblages, they can give rise to intimacy and collective action, and our relationships with them are fluid, embodied, and subject to the natural rhythms of the body and the machine (which are in many ways one and the same). Perhaps there is no real “imperative to grow new organs, to expand our sensorium and our body to some new, yet unimaginable, perhaps ultimately impossible, dimensions”, which technological advancement seems to always call for. Perhaps there is no imperative because it will happen anyway. For now, what we can do is locate each other where we are, and to seek new methods and assemblages that will help us feel seen, touched and cherished.

Bibliography

➔ Butler, Judith. Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? Verso, 2010. 

➔ haykal, bani. “NO FUTURE SHOULD BE VOID OF INTIMACY.” Independent Curators International, 12 August 2020, https://curatorsintl.org/posts/no-future-should be-void-of-intimacy. Accessed 20 December 2020.

➔ Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Verso, 1991.

➔ Nixon, Dan. “The body as mediator.” Aeon, 7 December 2020. https://aeon.co/essays/the-phenomenology-of-merleau-ponty-and-embodiment-in-the world Accessed 20 December 2020.

➔ Nye, Naomi Shihab. “Burning the Old Year.” Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48597/burning-the-old-year Accessed 20 December 2020.