![]() It presents a queered reading of fatal arachnid narratives of sex/birth in which death is not violence or programmatic terminus, but a zoëtic expression of desire as conatus: endlessly reaching for affirmative becomings through (re)productive cominglings of bodies-whether by penetration, modulation, ingestion, absorption. This paper seeks to recalibrate storied accounts of spider death rites through a critical, creative posthumanist approach to nonhuman life as zoë (Braidotti). The teleological outcome of ‘reproductive sex’-generation of spider progeny-also embeds a deathly caution: potential cannibalism of the mother by her children, overwritten in scientific and popular accounts as an altruistic act of ‘maternal self-sacrifice’. Implied in spider sex stories is the thrill of possible death, in which mortality becomes both eroticized and biologically rationalized. These accounts are buoyed by popular media narratives, supported by scientific observation, and, as has been argued, written into scientific practice and theory in ways that ‘naturalize’ misogynistic conceptions of gender/sexual relations and violence. Our understanding of this behaviour is underwritten by accounts of spider sex roles that borrow from anthropomorphic gender tropes: the disinterested/passive female, the active/performative male, the deceptive conceit of the sexual lure. This paper explores the death/life ecologies that flourish along the queered axes of spider reproductive behaviours-from cannibalistic sex to matricidal birth-and how the affective language and concepts through which these behaviours are understood both reflect and distort heteronormative human accounts of gender/sex, life/death. Nowhere is the porous threshold that interpolates life into death more tangible than in reproductive behaviours that embed the bodily mortality of their actants at the same time as they seek to extend those bodies in replicated biological code. The essay will focus on artists’ experience of an actual border as the boundary line between two states and how the experience of exile is constructed through their body. The paper will question the form that a border takes, trying to challenge its accessibility, permeability and potential as a contact and communication zone. The projects autobiographical paradigm intersects with larger social and cultural issues. ![]() These two projects are an aesthetic exploration of women’s experiences of belonging and otherness in borderland. This paper will look at two distinct forms of feminist performative political practice: Tanja Ostojic’s “Looking for a husband with EU passport” (2001-2005) and Lena Simic’s “Blood & Soil: we were always meant to meet.” (2011-2014). In the wake of this multiple sustainability crisis, unexpected forms of political art practice have gained momentum and public visibility. The post-democratic experience of disempowerment at the grass-roots level of many European societies coincides with the urgent need for new visions of social prosperity and wellbeing as revealed by the recent crisis of economic, environmental and social sustainability. So far, the results are not splendid, if you consider the debacle in the Mediterranean Sea and the increasing waves of xenophobia and racism that are sweeping across the union. ![]() The Europe of the European Union is virtual reality: it’s a project that requires hard work and commitment. We argue that dismantling the productive/unproductive dichotomy could lead to new forms of resistance, solidarity and/or collective action. the university) the control over “cognitive labourers” is exercised through distribution of anxiety which forces subjects to be productive. ![]() We argue that in this particular work environment (i.e. #Isadora mulvey freeWe pose the following questions: What happens to bodies in an increasingly neoliberal academia, which produces precarious, nomadic and, oftentimes, sick bodies (depressed, burned-out, anxious)? What are the ways in which control is being exercised over these bodies? Inspired by the idea of “situated knowledges” we claim that to produce academic discourses on how bodies and lives are kept under control, it is vital to recognize one’s own position (in this case it is a position located within the context of the academia) as a space which is not free from the relations of control, power and violence. We will attempt to bring together the “old” (Marxist) and new traditions of materialism in order to re-think the material of the cognitive work. ![]() This paper addresses the intersection of problems of labour, capitalism and the body, and situates it in the context of contemporary academia. ![]()
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