Lecture
23.01.23, 14:00
Seminarraum, Kunsthochschule Mainz
“Mermaids Washed Up on Shore” is a publication-based research project that takes the form of a creative nonfiction essay. Using elements of sci-fi writing, critical theory, and mythologies surrounding the Mediterranean, the story addresses themes of speculation, history, and biopolitics around bodies of water in a futuristic world.
Following the turbulent times succeeding the end of the Republic Coalition, a parliamentarian structure established in 2009 consisting of a network of representatives from all 12 colonies on Orion’s Belt, a new agency came into fruition. The Bureau for the Galactic Weather Forecast was created in an attempt to control and bureaucratize the information flow relating to issues of weather forecasting throughout the galaxy. Its purpose was to strengthen the government’s grip over the crucial issue of knowledge surrounding weather conditions. The case of raining in the void is something no soul has witnessed in any known part of the galaxy for at least four generations now.
Perhaps such turmoil isn’t really worth it; flying from one corner of the galaxy to the next, jumping back and forth in time, swirling up and down the moon colonies, peeing all around with the fear of catching something every time I enter a shuttle’s bathroom, or even coding in the service of the weather forecasters. Flying is not as much fun as it used to be these days. Thoughts like there sounded loudly inside his head. They spewed all over the insides of his ear and managed to exit his mouth screaming for freedom. Fucking bureaucrats.
But what would I get out of this? What could I gain from this whole panic?
The sea is long gone; the fluid that came out of the humans is now one with the void. There is no point of searching any longer. Nothing good can come out of poking around the past, no one worth talking to is sleeping underneath that wrecked desert. It’s all emptied out, a freckled vessel that waits for no one, a place of desperation and hybrids, a junkyard filled with broke dreams and dirty beggars.
The clouds engulfing that forgotten part of the Milky Way started to back down a couple of years after its destruction. Whatever was left after the end of the last war of 2007 started to gradually appear underneath his ship as he was approaching the atmosphere. (abstract)
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