How might we break down the known into particles of the unknown in order for a new consciousness to emerge? Drain calls for works of art, thought experiments, essays and reviews that explore the unknown micro-universe beyond the perceptible, rational or understandable. Are there different ways of understanding, visualizing and materializing molecular flows, particle physics, micro-components of chemical engineering, nanotechnology, micro-movements, affects and micro-sensations; micro-fibres, the photo-haptic synaesthesia involved in contemporary micro-pointillism and accumulation? And what of the fundamental components of life: pollen, spores, cells, the viral and fractal, the crystalline and organic, neurological circuits, biochemical, hormonal, genetic processes of entropy or creativity? How have molar, rational, disciplined, aesthetic, scientific, artistic, economic and political structures and systems tried to control and exploit the molecular and molecular flows? And how might the molecular, and perhaps, infinite, microscopic substrate of the universe offer opportunities to break down such systems and structures of rational control and knowledge? How does the molecular subvert the visible, resisting and continually destabilizing the tangible, fixed and known? Is the molecular a positive force of freedom and change that creates patterns and vibrations of flux, flow and process, melange and hybridity across borders and underneath surveillance?
IN THIS ISSUE
Feature Essay
Urban Art Interventions and Molecular Flows – Elisha Masemann
Feature Artist
Sediments and the Other Untitled… – Vibha Galhotra, interviewed by Avantika Bawa
Essays
Science’s Monsters, Monstrous Feminisms – Alison Roth Cooley
Trinocular Vision, Mini Mona Lisas and the Perfect Drug: Seeing the Unseen – Sarah Walko
Thought Experiments
The Microphysics of Desire – Gregory Minissale
Breaking Down the Century’s First Decade: Jonathan Field’s Maxwell’s Demon – Jared Butler
The Buckling of Abstraction: Matteo Pasquinelli’s Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons – Dave Mesing
Reviews
Jason Lazarus – Natasha Chaykowski
Review: Unheralded Stories exhibition by Tom Hunter at Mission Gallery, Wales – Deirdre Finnerty
F’d Up! – Jaclyn Qua-Hiansen
Jinny Yu – Clayton Windatt
Interviews
Making Awareness: An Interview with Joshua West Smith – Karl Burkheimer
Interview with Dayna Thacker – Karen Tauches
Creative Writing
Occasional Rays – Linden How
Art Projects
Molecular Texts – David Abel
Particulate Matter – Rachael Wren
Conversion – Emily Nachison
Molecular – Bruce Pollock