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<div>We're delighted to announce a new publication in the Media:
Art: Write: Now series edited for Open Humanities Press by Joanna
Zylinska.</div>
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<div><a
href="https://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/fungi-media/"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/fungi-media/</a></div>
<div><br>
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<div>Fungi Media by Piotr Bockowski.</div>
<p><i>Fungi Media</i> positions performance art of bodily mutations
as a form of corporeal philosophy. Examining ecologies of rot and
fungal decomposition, it outlines a theory of fungosexuality
beyond sexual reproduction and binary gender roles. This
theoretical perspective repositions queer sexualities in the
context of the original meaning of the term ‘queer’, which is
‘rot’ – and which stands for a fungi-induced process of
decomposition. With this, <i>Fungi Media</i> explores the
foundational importance of rot for both breaking down and
sustaining bodies, relationships and life as such. <br>
</p>
<p>The project was developed in a squatted sewage space in London,
adopted by the author as a laboratory for mutant performance. The
space hosts Chronic Illness events, where Internet-inspired body
artists enter an environment populated with fungi. The
interventions of human performers are incorporated into the rotten
physiology of the space, which itself becomes a live entity. This
book involves those events in the analysis of connections between
media technologies and primal life processes. It also offers
strategies for urban dwelling which transcend normative family
life.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Bockowski’s book – like its decompositional protagonist, fungi –
performs what it also examines: some intensive ways in which
queer, networked and entangled bodies can break down complex and
compromised entities to ‘enable new mutant fusions’. Fungi Media
is a fecund new contribution to the emerging field – both figural
and literal – of ‘libidinal ecology’; and the book’s exploration
of ‘fungosexuality’ is as rich, gamey, provocative and risky as
foraging hungrily in a toxic urban ecology full of unfamiliar
toadstools.<br>
Dominic Pettman, University Professor of Media and New
Humanities, The New School for Social Research<br>
<br>
In its distinctive approach of ‘cross-contamination’, Fungi Media
is both a relentlessly innovative exploration of theoretical
intercrossings between bacteria-infested corporeality and
post-Internet technologies - with new insights especially into
Antonin Artaud’s pivotal ‘body without organs’ work - and also a
documentation of an astonishing decade-long performance art series
held at a subterranean fungi-infested squatted space of
decomposition and sexual reinvention in north London. This will be
a seminal, prescient and provoking book for understanding future
proliferating mutations and creative rottings of the body in
relation to technologies.<br>
Stephen Barber, Professor of Art History, Kingston University<br>
<br>
Fungi Media explores the idea of the body as a cultural network,
focusing on how life is identified and experienced in the digital
age. The book is crafted in a post-Internet format, which
encompasses the material technology related to human mutations. It
navigates the interactions of sexuality, positioning the
post-Internet era within the realm of nonhuman media philosophy.
This framework facilitates the intersection of various forms of
mediation, examining how digital tools and technologies reshape
identity, sexuality and human interactions in contemporary
society.<br>
Kenji Siratori, writer, author of Blood Electric</p>
<p><br>
Author Bio<br>
<br>
Piotr Bockowski, aka neofung, is a London-based philosopher of
posthumanities, body performer and video artist. A curator of the
Chronic Illness art events at a squatted sewage space, he has
performed and shown his own work in Europe, China and the US. His
art criticism and speculative fictions have been published in
CLOT, Inertia, Cyclops Journal and Posthuman Magazine.</p>
<p></p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Gary Hall
Professor of Media
Director of the Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://postdigitalcultures.org/about/">https://postdigitalcultures.org/about/</a>
Website: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.garyhall.info">http://www.garyhall.info</a>
Follow on Mastodon here: @garyhall@hcommons.social
Latest:
'Magazine': Robot Review of Books: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.robotreviewofbooks.org/">https://www.robotreviewofbooks.org/</a>
Journal article: 'Culture and the University as White, Male, Liberal Humanist, Public Space', New Formations: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://journals.lwbooks.co.uk/newformations/vol-2023-issue-110/abstract-9912/">https://journals.lwbooks.co.uk/newformations/vol-2023-issue-110/abstract-9912/</a> (Open access pre-print available here: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://pureportal.coventry.ac.uk/en/publications/culture-and-the-university-as-white-male-public-liberal-humanist">https://pureportal.coventry.ac.uk/en/publications/culture-and-the-university-as-white-male-public-liberal-humanist</a>-.)
Blog posts: 'A Brief History of Writing: From Human Meaning to Pattern Recognition and Beyond', with Joanna Zylinska, The Writing Platform: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://thewritingplatform.com/2024/05/a-brief-history-of-writing-from-human-meaning-to-computational-pattern-recognition-and-beyond/">https://thewritingplatform.com/2024/05/a-brief-history-of-writing-from-human-meaning-to-computational-pattern-recognition-and-beyond/</a>
'Creative AI: Thinking Outside the Black Box', Media Theory: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://mediatheoryjournal.org/2024/05/24/gary-hall-creative-ai-thinking-outside-the-black-box/">https://mediatheoryjournal.org/2024/05/24/gary-hall-creative-ai-thinking-outside-the-black-box/</a>
'Oxford and the Observer Do Social Mobility', <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/2024/6/10/oxford-and-the-observer-do-social-mobility.html">http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/2024/6/10/oxford-and-the-observer-do-social-mobility.html</a>
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