Of Animacy Reading Group: Blasted Landscapes

The Of Animacy Reading Group convenes for the final meeting of 2017 to discuss Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s account of matsutake mushrooms, the first live thing to grow in Hiroshima after the atom bomb, as a resilient life form on disturbed soil.

Mapping out the disturbance histories of four matsutake forests, Tsing demonstrates the malleability and unforeseeable fluctuations of ecological systems that constantly oscillate between devastation and recovery. Blasted Landscapes calls for discovering the life-promoting patches of our damaged environment, where we might still be able to foster multispecies living. 

• Text: Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Blasted Landscapes (and the Gentle Arts of Mushroom Picking) in The Multispecies Salon, ed. Eben Kirksey (Duke University Press, 2014)

Excerpts of the text will be read together during the session to support open discussion

For access to and further information on the readings, please email nella.aarne@ica.art

This monthly reading group led by curator Nella Aarne thinks through feminist engagements with human and non-human agents in the material world. The reading group meets every month at the ICA and is always open to all