Aberrant movements

Aberrant movementsECF

#experimentalpoetic, #lifedeadagency

Aberrant movements threaten life as much as they liberate its forces (Rajchman 35)

A massive chasm lays open at 67°34′48″N - 134°46′17″E Sakha Republic Russia Batagaika Crater as the chasm is known melts and spills gases and bacteria older than men A foul river of melted permafrost and mixed organic matter including ice-age mammals bleeds out from its cavernous mouth

“Below the cliff face, steep hills and gullies drop to Batagaika’s floor. As more of the material at the bottom of the slope melts and comes loose, a larger face is exposed to the air, which in turn increases the speed of permafrost thawing. The crater will likely eat through the entire hillslope before it slows down. Every year as soon as temperatures go above freezing, it’s going to start happening again. Once you’ve exposed something like this, it’s very hard to stop it.” (NASA)

What disturbs the normal flow (aberrant movement) / what determines the normal flow (logic) What logic do aberrant movements obey?

(Rajchman 25)

Violent uneasiness

Tearing

Disturbance

Hiccup

Latency

Dislocation Reflex

Syncope (common fainting)

Inevitably aberrant movements happen in the instant of disjunction A spark of divergence A blind jump from 0 to 1

Conway’s Game of Life follows 3 simple rules 1 Any live cell with two or three live neighbours survives —> 1:1 2 Any dead cell with three live neighbours becomes a live cell —> 0:1 3 All other live cells die in the next generation. Similarly, all other dead cells stay dead —> 1:0 0:0 Iterate

The game of life is a zero-player game

[Life] compels the subjects towards experimentations at the limit of the viable (Rajchman 36)

Slime mould finds its way moves

seeks

(r)evolves engulfs

digests

One couldn’t say that slime mould think Not even that it has a nervous system Yet it thrives So do enzymes It is difficult to talk even think about biology without the narrative of purpose

“Agency stems from two ingredients: first, an ability to produce different responses to identical (or equivalent) stimuli, and second, to select between them in a goal-directed way.” (Ball)

Death is the silent authority that in turn makes life aberrant Aberrant movements tear us from ourselves (Rajchman 37)

Kusōzu paintings represent the nine stages of a decaying corpse From flesh to carcass a feast for scavengers They depict the gradual decline of the body into entropy The body becomes the ground

Aberrant movements partake of an “inorganic life” that permeates organisms and undermines their integrity a life indifferent to the bodies that it traverses no less to the subjects it disrupts (Rajchman 36)

Laika horribly died of overheating during takeoff on November 3rd 1957 For a moment each one of Laika’s cells was living but the sum of all of them was already a carcass A feast for scavengers if it weren’t because

“over five months later, after 2,570 orbits, Sputnik 2— including Laika’s remains—disintegrated during re-entry on 14 April 1958.” (Wikipedia)

The fold unfolded to infinity, the eternal return All regular movements are secondary, derivative Nature at its core is pure aberration (Rajchman 34)

Close to Batagaika the Reka Yana river swings its way to the ocean the memory of the riverbed is visible for the observing satellite its flow new old and future crisscrossed like RNA in protein

“Until the beginning of the 19th century, organic compounds were considered to be found only in living beings or to be produced exclusively by them. However, in 1823, the German chemist Friedrich Wöhler (18001882) conducted an experiment in which he managed to synthesise urea, an organic compound, from an inorganic compound. In doing so, he refuted the notion of the “life force”, the idea of which was that only living beings had the ability to produce organic matter.” (Diferenciador.com)

How do aberrant movements not become part of a process of self-destruction? (Rajchman 34)

The river course is rich on carbon reservoirs Petroleum used to be living matter DNA traces can sometimes be found in petroleum That is why it is called fossil fuel

It is not suicidal as long as the destructive flow is not reduced to itself but serves to conjugate other flows Suicidal is the contrary to connection: is organized disconnection (Rajchman 35)

Through fracking or hydraulic fracture gas and petroleum are brutally extracted from the earth pores High-pressured water is injected into the ground until it penetrates rocks and the last bit of fossil fuel has been ripped out Returning a fountain of water and forced organic matter excessive byproducts of the living dead

One can easily fall from living into a whole other dead, to which capitalism drives us which transforms us into the living dead (Rajchman 37)

Living isn’t excluded of dead as much as dead isn’t excluded from living

To become a living dead you can either a radically isolate b radically dilute

I twist my ankle until my fibula breaks For I live My thumb scrolls down a screen for 11,3 minutes For I’m not living My heart has beaten about 1,177,344 times For I’ve lived My retina wiggles under blue light for 10 hours a day For I don’t live A cell in my brain abnormally multiplies For I might die

I digest petroleum derivatives cooked with petroleum derivatives while dressed in petroleum derivatives For am I living?

In 2020 I lay more than I stood In killing time I became different from a stone closer to petroleum

Sources in order of appearance: John Rajchman, “Aberrant movement” Batagaika Crater Expands, NASA Earth Observatory, April 27, 2017 RGB (Red–Green–Blue) images of the Batagaika crater from 1991 to 2018. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12665-020-8895-7 https://aeon.co/essays/the-biological-research-putting-purpose-back-into-life Detail from Body of a Courtesan in Nine Stages of Decomposition, handscroll, Meiji Japan, c.1870s © The Trustees of the British Museum.

Aeon Magazine, 13 November 2020. URL: Ball, Philippe. “Life with purpose”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laika Wikipedia. Laika. URL: URL https://www.diferenciador.com/compuestos-organicos-e-inorganicos/ (Translated into English with Deepl) Diferenciador.com. “Compuestos orgánicos e inorgánicos”.