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︎_{Gluttonous Rise}

artist, designer, researcher, educator

hsurae

In the following
acts of commotion, an unreliable narrator guides the reader through multiple subjectivities.

The
narrator’s credibility is compromised not due to character flaws or
psychological inconsistencies,
but a fundamental rejection
of the individual.

HOW
MANY
CITIZENS
ARE
LIVING
IN
THIS
BODY?

Hi there

I’`m m`istre^ss kin$hi?p.
(my pronouns are they/it)

I’l! b(e yo`ur ho/st tod@y.

gatcacaggt

But to be completely honest,
I’m not just hosting you.

(a second set of breathing)

(a butterfly flutters)
(surround sound—bubbling)

I am a puppet of the
microbial,

my
thoughts

encoded by
viral genes,
(ctatcaccct)
my desires conditioned
by bacterial wants.

Like the
insect

whose

gender— is bent

by
the

Wolbachia
bacteria;

Like the
ant

aimlessly
aimlessly
aimlessly

lurching

under the persuasion of the
Cordycep fungi;

Or the
zombie snail that climbs

up
to the top of a tree,
(pulsating)
(awaiting)
the bird that consumes it.

(agency)
—who decides?
“me” or “my microbes”?

attaaccact

Can the two ever be distinct from,

outside
of,
each other?

I want you to know

this joy
of being
through others.

We are not in ourselves, we are through others,
always through others.

ttggtatttt
:herein lies the first line of the human mitochondrial DNA, inherited from ancestral bacteria.

COMMOTION II

The counter-aesthetics of

em
pathy

I’m using empathy the way that poets use a word like rose, as a symbol that leaps between fact and feeling.

Empathy is a concept we hear only too often, because at the bottom of empathy is the question: how do we care for one another?

We cannot dispense with it, but we need to find ways to delay, displace, and dubb its meaning beyond the absolute individuation of subjectivity.

COMMOTION III

It behaves like a wave until it is observed