::fibreculture:: Fungi Media by Piotr Bockowski - new open access book

[Gary Hall]

We're delighted to announce a new publication in the Media: Art: Write:
Now series edited for Open Humanities Press by Joanna Zylinska.

https://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/fungi-media/

Fungi Media by Piotr Bockowski.

/Fungi Media/ 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, /Fungi Media/ explores the
foundational importance of rot for both breaking down and sustaining
bodies, relationships and life as such.

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.


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.
     Dominic Pettman, University Professor of Media and New Humanities,
The New School for Social Research

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.
     Stephen Barber, Professor of Art History, Kingston University

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.
     Kenji Siratori, writer, author of Blood Electric


Author Bio

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.

--
Gary Hall
Professor of Media
Director of the Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University:
https://postdigitalcultures.org/about/

Website:http://www.garyhall.info
Follow on Mastodon here: @garyhall at hcommons.social

Latest:

'Magazine': Robot Review of Books:https://www.robotreviewofbooks.org/

Journal article: 'Culture and the University as White, Male, Liberal Humanist, Public Space', New Formations:https://journals.lwbooks.co.uk/newformations/vol-2023-issue-110/abstract-9912/  (Open access pre-print available here:https://pureportal.coventry.ac.uk/en/publications/culture-and-the-university-as-white-male-public-liberal-humanist-.)

Blog posts: 'A Brief History of Writing: From Human Meaning to Pattern Recognition and Beyond', with Joanna Zylinska, The Writing Platform:https://thewritingplatform.com/2024/05/a-brief-history-of-writing-from-human-meaning-to-computational-pattern-recognition-and-beyond/

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'Oxford and the Observer Do Social Mobility',http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/2024/6/10/oxford-and-the-observer-do-social-mobility.html

















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