Undead Matter #2
Marking silences
Curated by Sophie J Williamson.
Undead Matter is an unfolding conversation about where life lies in the ever-turning matter of our universe, as it rhythmically resurfaces over millennia.
In this second episode, geographer Kathryn Yusoff speaks with poet Myung Mi Kim about the potencies of past lives, traumas, histories and possibilities that are held in the demarcated silences between the rock strata and between words. They consider the multiple ‘broken worlds’ that have come before our current perceptions of ecological crisis, and how descriptions of geologies have perpetuated colonial narratives erasing the geotraumas imposed on peoples through colonial extraction and violence. They question the possible sites of politics, intimacies and scripts of life, as places with the potential to activate new realities, as matter and words reform around us, time and again. Interweaving the conversation are readings of Kim’s poetry and a sound work by artist Shamica Ruddock. At the end of the podcast, the full sound work by Ruddock, Sun Dial 51.3861°, 1.3520° plays out, as it reaches downwards to the geological substrata beneath our feet.
Undead Matter, initiated and convened by curator Sophie J Williamson, is an ongoing collective project, materialising slowly and organically in exhibitions, events, podcasts, publishing and the intangible. The Undead Matter programme has emerged through intersecting collaborations with artists, poets, dancers and musicians, as well cryomicrobiologists, shamen, paleontologists, mineralogists, archaeoastronomers, woodworkers, quantum physicists, bondage masters, cryonics speculators and others encountered along the way. Each offers a perspective on our place within the infinite impermanence of life: past, present and possible.
This series of podcasts traverses the slippery space between the organic and the inorganic. The conversations travel from remote Arctic tundra, where ancient creatures are emerge from the melting permafrost; to deep within the geological substrata of the ocean bed among the sludge of millennia-old microorganisms; outward to the celestial expanse of interstellar dust, full of life-giving potential; and back again.
Curated by Sophie J Williamson. Produced by Undead Matter. Sound work by Shamica Ruddock. Sound by Either/Or Recordings.
Image by Mark Olalde. South Africa, 2017.
Existing between
Undead Matter, a new series by Sophie J Williamson, is an unfolding conversation about where life lies in the ever-turning matter of our universe, as it rhythmically resurfaces over millennia. In this third episode, writer, Daisy Hildyard speaks with marine microbiologist, Karen Lloyd about 100-million-year-old microbes, that breathe and excrete minerals: bridging the organic and the non-organic, the living and the non-living.
In previous episodes we have hinted at limits as an interesting feature of objects that are often fuzzy or vague, and therefore hard to outline. This time around, we take a radically different approach to limits. A much darker, urgent take on boundaries and edges, if you will. This is not so much about ontological boundaries, but rather about the dangers of looking at the world with no limits in mind. In dialogue with Andrea Ballestero and Chris Korda. Music by Jessica Ekomane.
Emergent Interstellar Dust
Undead Matter, a new series by Sophie J Williamson, is an unfolding conversation about where life lies in the ever-turning matter of our universe, as it rhythmically resurfaces over millennia. In the first episode, artist and poet, Himali Singh Soin and astrobiologist, Prof Chandra Wickramasinghe discuss signs of life from the cosmos, the theory of panspermia and the biosphere of the galaxy.