The (in)separability of matter: on prāṇa, energy and permeation

Sharples presented the paper: ‘The (in)separability of matter: on prāṇa, energy and permeation’ as part of Session 10C at SLSA2021 Energy: 34th Annual Meeting of the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts, hosted by the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Abstract:

‘The (in)separability of matter: on prāṇa, energy and permeation’ is a paper in response to a three-year practice-led study, which speculates on (non)human bodily ‘intra-activity’ (Barad, 2007) relative to cremation practices at Pashupatinath Temple and along the sacred and contaminated Bagmati River in Kathmandu through Gas Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) and Inductively Coupled Plasma–Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) ash analysis readings. It is the outcome of field research, laboratory experiments and a series of participatory projects which aim to unbalance asymmetric tendencies which assume the ontological separation of the human and non-human through collective; microperformative, practices.

Realised between 2018–2020, Ash is an international (e)mail art project in which three pieces of Nepalese Lokta paper were placed on the surface of the Bagmati downstream from Pashupatinath. Once dried, participants sent their contributions to the UK using their closest postal service. Contributions were received from artists Sagar Manandhar and Pratima Thakali from Kathmandu University, and from Nepali musician Anil Shahi. On arrival, the substrates were incinerated and analysed through GC-MS and ICP-MS at the University of York and the University of Leeds. Through the intersection of art, ecology and New Materialism, this paper calls into question the permeability of organic and machinic matter as agential, osmotic and energetic (Salter, 2020). It builds on the assumed ‘aliveness’ of ‘live art’ practice (Hauser & Strecker, 2020), and calls on ‘passive’ matter to contribute to this discourse. For ENERGY: SLSA 2021, this paper unpacks the spiritual substance of prāṇa as an energy-current that permeates all.

SLSA21 Conference:

Prompt:

SLSA21 Virtual Conference and Poster Member Exhibition features panels, individual papers, roundtables, workshops, arts lounges, social networking events, and creative works that deal with topics related to the expanded notion of ‘energy’. Energy (etymologically meaning “in or at work, working”) connects us to the most pressing issues of the day: mental and physical vitality or fatigue (individual and collective, personal and political, creative and professional), including in the pandemic; the sources of energy (their extraction, depletion, abundance, and exhaustion; bitcoin mining and computational infrastructures; body energy, its flow, exploitation, alienation, and finitude); scientific theories and creative imagination around the relation between matter and energy (as in electromagnetic, particle, gravitational, acoustic forms of radiation; the living and the non-living, metamorphosis). Submissions are also invited that explore how energy is connected to power, science, and profit, history and war, flesh and labor.

Building on previous SLSA topics ‘Out of Time’ and ‘(Out of) Mind,’ in Fall 2021 you are invited to consider the meaning of having or being ‘Out of Energy.’ There will be contributions from colleagues in the sciences, engineering, technology, computer science, medicine, the social sciences, the humanities, the arts, and independent scholars and artists that share a broader interest in problems of science and representation, and in the cultural and social dimensions of science, technology, and medicine.

Panel 10C Chair: Jonathan Basile (Emory University, United States)

Speakers: Jussi Parikka (FAMU / Academy of Performing Arts, Prague, Czechia), Abelardo Gil-Fournier (FAMU at the Academy of Performing Arts, Prague, Czechia), Bethany Berard (Carleton University, Canada), Jonathan Basile (Emory University, United States), Dr. Victoria Emily Sharples (University of Derby, UK).