E-Catalogue for Sum of two and three, One more than four

I contributed two and a half essays to this catalogue for the exhibit Sum of two and three, One more than four: Sherry Czekus, Lynette de Montreuil, Mike Pszczonak, Niloufar Salimi, and Matthew Tarini at the ArtLab in London. I wrote the second, third and fifth.

Notes: On the rudiments of culture

 

From The Infanticidal Logic of Evolution and Culture by A. Samuel Kimball. Not a popular book by any means, but essential reading for the too often ignored basics.

The infanticidal implications of reproductive success, easy enough to demonstrate, are burdensome to accept, for they signal the mistakenness of the common belief that evolution is principally the set of processes by which life proliferates. To the contrary, evolutionary change gives rise to life only as that life economizes on - lives off of by destroying- itself within a thermodynamic horizon that condemns all living things to extinction. (42)

Evolution is economization; economization is sacrificial because it necessitates the deflection of costs onto others and the environment. What's more, this sacrifice is intrinsically infanticidal following the thermodynamic limit imposed by the evolutionary economy. Infanticide destroys lineages singly and collectively, in the present and into the future. This economy entails not only these ends, but "the inevitable end of life itself." (37) Terrestrial vital existence is axiomatically ruled by these principles. "The evolutionary program knows no other economy, and the economy it does know is sacrificial." (38)

E-catalogue for Rory Dean's The Bassoonist

Get it here. From The Petrified Forest Gallery. With essays by yours truly and Joe Becker.