Does matter matter?
Romina Wainberg (*)
In this workshop, we will use two intertwined objects as springboards for reflecting upon matter and materiality from an anthropodecentric perspective:
1-Stones (mainly organic and inorganic gemstones)
2-Texts (poems, essays, articles, and short stories)
My invitation is for you to explore not only “how much” but also what kinds of knowledge you have of the matter(s) with and on which you work (e.g. if you do philosophy or literary criticism or literature: what are your epistemological and aesthetic approaches to the natural and artificial languages that you “use” to write? How acquainted are you with the inhuman dimensions of human languages? If you do plastic art: how do you technically, aesthetically, and ethically choose the materials that make up your work? How acquainted are you with the chemical composition and the physical structure of the materials you interact with?).
We will read an interdisciplinary corpus of texts that explore the proposed objects of study from more-than-human standpoints. This corpus will help us welcome and develop multiple ways of epistemologically and aesthetically engaging with the plasticity, resilience, frailty, and consistency of matter.
Bibliography
Adorno, Theodor W. “The Artist as Deputy” (1953). Available at: <shorturl.at/hlmyM>
Agustini, Delmira. “Al vuelo [In Flight]” (c. 1914). Partial transl. available at: <bit.ly/3FWxskt> (p. 60).
Calvão, Filipe and Lindsay Bell. “From Ashes to Diamonds: Making Lab-Grown Afterlife” (2021). Available at: <tsantsa.ch/article/view/6916>
Darío, Rubén. “El rubí [The Ruby]” (1888). Translation available at: <bit.ly/3MtUGB9>
De Man, Paul. “The Resistance to Theory” (1982). Available at: <jstor.org/stable/pdf/2929828.pdf>
Dos Anjos, Augusto. “Volúpia Imortal [Immortal Lust]” (1912). Original and translation available at: <bit.ly/3yMGz5Q>
Rodgers, Lila V.H., et al. “Materials Challenges for Quantum Technologies Based on Color Centers in Diamond” (2021). Available at: <link.springer.com/article/10.1557/s43577-021-00137-w>
Optional
Barnard, Amanda S. et al. “Does Twinning Impact Structure/Property Relationships in Diamond Nanoparticles?” (2019). Available at: <pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.jpcc.9b00142>. Illustrative example: <bit.ly/3FWB8CN>
Catren, Gabriel. “What is Ensoundment?” (2016). Available at: <bit.ly/3Ns5z6j>
Drumm, Colin. “Introduction: Money, In and Out of the Question” (2021). Available at: <bit.ly/3PF5IFI>
(*) Romina Wainberg holds a Specialization in Creative Writing from Casa de Letras, a B.A. in Literary Theory and Modern Literature from the University of Buenos Aires, and an M.Phil. in Hispanic Studies from the University of Glasgow. She is currently finishing a Ph.D. in Iberian and Latin American Cultures at Stanford University and the Graduate Gemologist program at the Gemological Institute of America.
