[...]at is about the modes of existence (including inanimate things: the diamond, what can it do? what tests is it capable? what does it support? we define things by what they can do ==> it opens up forms of experimentation = my ajayeb, Cinderella diaries, Telegram bestiary, Despret's ethology) [=/= interested in what is called the animal classification, one will define the animal above all, whenever possible, by its essence (by what it is)]
--Latour--> reinstituting nature, *one does not learn from beings turned into zombies* (deanimated) ==> (ethology is required to) address an animal defined as non-indifferent: an animal for which the way it is addressed matters
--Despret--> [*]ethology: a practical science of the modes of interrogating and experimenting with ways of being = ****a practical science of the modes of attention**** (that are required by the ways of being of those it aims to study)

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working on:
•[with Despret and Katie] How my “special things” belong also to others, and how in this belonging i can unlearn something about my things, call it heritage
•in my own performances, the proposal that “story” and “medium” do not need to fit... is also why my lectures don't produce similar joinings (for the audience)


every phenomena is at the same time experienced, resisted, measured, enunciated, performed, narrated

politics, poetics and affects of finitude

fossil nihilism

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Frankenstein: an all-purpose modifier to denote technological crimes against nature--a criminal only after being left alone by his horrified creator
--Latour--> we have failed to care for our own creations : Frankenstein as a parable for political ecology

to be coextensive with...
to become compositionist: one that sees the process of human development as a process of becoming ever-more attached to nonhuman natures (=/= fallen from nature)

story of modernity:
•humankind's emancipation from nature
•***progress (forward movement of the arrow of time) = indifference to the past*** ==> “past: an archaic and dangerous confusion”
•the confidence of being able to differentiate clearly what in the past was still mixed up: facts & values

green politics ==> gloomy asceticism, a terror for trespassing nature, and diffidence toward industry, innovation, technology, and science

my work has been against the notion of “nature = a hierarchical totality”

emancipation =/= attachment =/= intimacy

*environment: what appeared when unwanted consequences came back to haunt the originators of collective modernizing actions
*environmentalism: when the unwanted consequences are suddenly considered to be a monstrosity (#apocalyptic) ==> abstain & repent --> Leo:

environmentalist logic: “precaution = abstention”

‘global warming’ is an unintended consequence (like anything in earth) <-- narrative of attachment =/= an scandal, end of the world (<-- apocalyptic narrative of emancipation, modernist myth of mastery)

pristine nature =/= our nature ~= national park: a rural ecosystem complete with post offices, well-tended roads, highly subsidized cows, and handsome villages

(Latour giving the example of theology:) ‘mastery ==> attachment’ : “the christian God gets folded into, involved with, implicated with, and incarnated into his creation.” =/= a master who is freed from dependents
}--Latour--> dominion means attachment

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Mi You

modernization process of European societies ==> secularity ==> “religion = only one option among other ways of self-fulfilment and human flourishing”

*self-sufficient humanism has never existed on the same scale before in European societies before the Enlightenment*

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#writing for mini-series bestiaries
inspired by the https://www.instagram.com/ajayebedidani/
1. https://www.instagram.com/p/CPYnbZnH2w3/ short episode at night in country X there is a talking apple that speeks in unknown language. character acting, location garden, animation, play with mixed CG architecture
2.


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borderline animals --in--> medieval bestiary

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*alegorical world* --> eastern fables + easter & western animal lore + christian Physiologus [not ancient sciences?!] ~=> bestiary

Physiologus, bestiary --> popular source for sermon writers [<-- relevance for lecture performance]



[email to Mona]
bebin man ye chizi cherto pert sareham kardam. in gharare bere tu catalog alan
*working title for the lecture at Mona's project “Rat Race”:
The Pray and The Visible -- An animal escape case
*short description:
the lecture-performance approaches the idea of the animals’ “friendship” in a historical and speculative look at the anthropomorphic geography of fables from middle-south Asian bestiary till pettube.com uploads.

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...political satire
Obeyd Zakani - mush o gorbe



some of us are woman, child, animal
(coded as a girl)

(man up! woman up! child up! animal up! etc.)


the world that is claiming me, recruiting me, ...

if you are an iranian child you would know some violences...
endangered being, endangered animal, if you are then you know what is a violent care.
*leaving unprotected*


becoming attached, making friends, putting together a family

like other anxious creatures, I can exhibit friendliness (=/= keeping my stubborn alterity intact. how much space for the utter strangeness we are allowed or able to hold?)

an iranian default position


داستانِ dastan-e


according to Heidegger:
thinking <---> thanking
complaining <---> explaining
(to explain =/=? to thank)
(to complain =/=? to think)
[explain : from Latin explain? ?(“I flatten, spread out, make plain or clear, explain”), from ex- ?(“out”) + plan? ?(“I flatten, make level”), from planus ?(“level, plain”); see plain and plane.]


afformations

sexual arousal, and its presence in freindship,
normalcy codes, and institutionalizations of friendship (--> friendship insures the modeling of all sorts of vital ethical and political dispositions)
(#harem)

pro-ject, intro-ject, and ob-ject
the things we introject,

fb

good example, bad example, etc.

if you “understand” someone you are off friendship
understanding presuposses distance and difference
friendship must include disidentification
empathy replacing understanding? (do we really want an “empathic non-understanding”? to enfold the spectator with..)
[empathic non-understanding: a relationship that gives up the self's need for constant affirmation (Laura Marks) --> pulls us instead into a “meterial understanding” of our connection with other animals] ==> challenging the ontological primacy of centers (in general and not only human center stage)
“you are thrown off by this narcisistic extension that the other appropriated by your identification has become” (Avital)
-disproportion is always present and operating



i am not sure if there is an iranian pop song we can agree to like (or to hit ‘like’)



symbolic language
attaching sounds to things/animals/species when they were not visible
(“Never ignore a sound!”)


The jungle is a social space. {biological real, disciplinary boundary making stories}


Children at age six are typically anthropomorphic

...youth “hanging out” in age-specific gangs they are “growing themselves up,” often in a milieu of violence and power

deprivation of (avuncular and) grandparental care =?=> lifelong hostility to one's parents

elderly functions have been lost in disintegration

.

ok. let's put the whip down. the point is just to mention the word whip, and since you are all well trained, it does its job. we are all trained animals, gathered here, calm and curious, want to investigate what or who is training us, whipping our asses, associating our senses with signals he or she or it sends to our bodies, being petted[...]