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The Cosmic New Materialisms reading group: A cosmic collective cartography
The Cosmic New Materialisms (CNM) Reading Group was created by Dr Jennifer Crouch and Dr Melanie King in response to the ongoing necessity to think in entangled, complex and embodied ways about extraterrestrial environments and matter. In our current era of technofeudalism, the Earth’s 6th mass extinction, ecological collapse, increased militarism, authoritarianism, extractivism and surveillance capitalism, we recognise an ethical imperative in exploring the actual, notional and material implications of humanity’s complex relationship with space beyond the atmosphere. What started off as a series of conversations in the summer of 2024 grew into an inclusive reading group launched in December 2024. Developed as a multi-media and informal research group, we aim to engage and invite anyone and everyone who is curious about matter in our cosmos and our relationship to it. We meet every 4 or 6 weeks and discuss a chapter, book, article or work of art/media. So far, we have engaged with texts by Valerie Olson, Karen Barad, Astrida Neimanis and a playlist of music and videos compiled by attendees. The original callout for the CNM group was on Instagram and WhatsApp, and received a high volume and wide range of interest online. Attendees meet online and are invited to respond in whichever way they like to the image/text/sound we have decided to explore. Some participants choose to respond with poems, artworks, and images as well as ideas and reflections. Our responses are then amalgamated in a co-created evolving communal mind map, that visually draws together imagery, sound, thoughts, comments and concepts which participants can add to in their own time. Our goal is to create a community and explore connections between cultures, matters, time and space We propose to present and share our ongoing communal mind map/image map co-created by CNM participants. This digital artefact is an ongoing work in progress that visualises our shared and intersectional understanding of the topics we have explored so far: water, politics and ethnographies of space travel, geologies of media and feminist new materialisms. This ongoing, collaborative map contains links, videos and archives the emerging perspectives, cultures, positionality and historiography of CNM. Our participant-contributors are engaged in mutual and egalitarian non-hierarchical ways. We aim to create deep, meaningful engagement far beyond the structures and boundaries of academic research in space studies and STS.
Reading Session List
Session One: Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology - Astrida Neimanis
Session Two: Into the Extreme: U.S. Environmental Systems and Politics beyond Earth - Valerie Olson
Session Three: Meeting the Universe Halfway Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning - Karen Barad
Session Four: Geology of Media - Jussi Parikka
Session Five: Cosmodolphins Feminist Cultural Studies of Technology, Animals and the Sacred, Mette Bryld & Nina Lykke
Session Six: Underland: A Deep Time Journey - Robert Macfarlane
Session Seven: Disabled Ecologies: Lessons from a Wounded Desert - Sunaura Taylor
Session Eight: Posthuman Convergences Transdisciplinary Methods and Practices Edited by Goda Klumbytė, Emily Jones, Rosi Braidotti
Session Nine: Annihilation The Southern Reach Trilogy - Jeff VanderMeer
Session Ten: Camera Geologica: An Elemental History of Photography - Siobhan Angus
MIRO BOARD LINK