#synchronicityofparasites: Parasitic and Symbiotic

vrijdag 13 september 2019

Parasitic and Symbiotic

"We are the parasites of the modern and make the modern possible through our parasitic action; and this leads to a symbiotic relation in which neither party – the world or the
individual, the institution or its subject – gains from the destruction of their necessary relation.This necessary condition of ambivalent interrelation is why thinking through parasites is particularlyimportant, especially in the political context of immigrants, the poor, the disabled, the underemployed,the unwed, and the tax-evasive all being construed as parasites; and then there are all the human/non-human relations to consider: humans and their livestock, humans and their bacteria and viruses, humansand their environment, humans and their pets. How parasitism is identified is important; how it provides the basis for sociality at all is even more critical to conceptualize and detail."
Matthew Wolf-Meyer and Samuel Collins – Parasitic and Symbiotic – The Ambivalence of Necessity
https://www.academia.edu/3243779/Parasitic_and_Symbiotic_The_Ambivalence_of_Necessity

#synchronicityofparasites

Synchronicity or the happening by chance of two or more related or similar events at the same time, is often positioned within the realm of parapsychology and magical thinking, or with some kind of quantum effect crossing over into the classical world.

Synchronicity can appear to point towards some kind of hidden or unknown connectivity underneath events.

In the case of #synchronicityofparasites, parasites operating as pre-conscious perceptual filters, installing a bias for meaningful events, or parasites as biological or network tricksters hiding causal links out of sight of the scientific apparatus or categories, turn the concept into another effective parasitic strategy.

In a way #synchronicityofparasites itself acts as a parasite that embodies the hidden link between all those more or less isolated parasite projects in science, art and literature and turns them into a kind of decentralized para-culture.

Many of the posts refer to a series of academic papers on parasites, parasitically appropriated and printed to a zine format.

This to promote academic writing within the format of the zine and turn the zine into a tool for (self)-education and knowledge production. But also to lift this knowledge out of its academic niche and into an active social cultural network. I feel relatively free to do so because I think that anyone promoting a positive view on parasitism cannot be too rigid about being parasited upon without contradicting themselves: In a way, the parasite incorporates its own creative commons. At the same time the library also acknowledges the precariousness involved in parasitism. Our zines are not sold for profit, mass produced or randomly distributed.

#marc_van_elburg, www.zinedepo.nl

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