Undead Matter #3 Existing between
- 00:44 What do an american barn owl, a zimbabwean hippopotamus and Norwegian reindeer have in common?
- 01:53 What is it like to work in silent spaces?
- 02:53 The product of the microbes
- 03:34 What happens to the mud after analysing it at the lab?
- 04:16 It's always a "we"
- 04:52 Reading of an excerpt of "The Second Body"
- 06:03 Unknown microbes: colonies or individuals?
- 08:00 Reading of an excerpt of "The Second Body"
- 08:47 A few notes on entropy
- 10:45 Mystery, darkness and not knowing
- 12:43 Trapped in our time
- 16:31 Periods of dormancy
- 18:29 Reading of an excerpt of "The Second Body"
- 20:33 The fine life between life and non-life
- 21:59 Reading of an excerpt of "The Second Body"
- 22:33 The Greenland Shark and a few considerations of time
- 24:32 Reading of an excerpt of "The Second Body"
- 27:36 More-than-human scales
- 30:32 Reading of an excerpt of "The Second Body"
- 31:45 Stability is an illusion
- 32:35 Truths and de-facto realities
- 33:58 Microbes and breathing: the bridge connecting time scales
- 36:45 Intraterrestial life: the most accesible place you can find aliens...
- 39:10 Reading of an excerpt of "The Second Body"
- 43:38 Like a perpetual motion machine, but not
- 46:23 Reading of an excerpt of "The Second Body"
- 47:57 Describing a new phylum of microbes: the limitations of using preconceived notions
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 third episode, writer, Daisy Hildyard speaks with marine microbiologist, Karen Lloyd about 100-million-year-old microbes, that breathe and excrete minerals. From the small town of Ny Ålesund, Svalbard, Lloyd describes her explorations into the permafrost sub surface – where she extracts living microbes that have not interacted with the surface for at least 10,000 years – and questions the possible importance of the individual microbe within its community. Considering time as a malleable resource, they discuss the possibilities of differing perceptions of time, space and motion on different lifespan scales: from the human and the unfathomably ancient. Interwoven with readings from Hildyard’s book, The Second Body, the conversation bridges possibilities of dialogue, connections and the refusal of rules between the organic and the non-organic, the living and the non-living.
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 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.