You Make It Hard to Have a Good Time

_{ŠUM#12: THRESHOLD ECOLOGIES (Nov 2019). Texts by: Bogna M Konior, Lukáš Likavčan, n1x, Domen Ograjenšek, Germán Sierra. Edited by: Marko Bauer, Tjaša Pogačar. Link to pdf: http://sumrevija.si/en/issues/sum-12/}

You Make It Hard to Have a Good Time

The article tackles our anxieties and compulsions, Ariana Grande’s ponytail, transmaterial ethics, and the moody foundations of contemporary art. #lizardbrain

Excerpt:

“I once heard that Ariana Grande’s ponytail changes colour, depending on its emotions. And it probably does. It must. No mere extension could bring so many people joy. And joy it brings. Our lizard brain is perhaps protected by its skeletal enclosure, but that does not detach it from the surroundings into which it invests its neural energy.
Just like the toxic bodies of our polluted streams permeate our own bodies, defining their flesh with viscous porosity and making them expansive membranes rather than well-rounded self-sufficing entities, so do our affects leave our lizard brain, or better yet, extend it beyond its primary limbic setting. Our emotions and compulsions are not merely a matter of the heart, but are also a matter of dirt and sometimes glitter […]
So the next time you see Grande’s ponytail, do wish it a pleasant day, emote with it, and perhaps it will emote with you as well. Because absurdity aside, the intersubjective field is drastically changing, and change it must. The planetary ecological crisis brings along a strange temporality where what already is, what must be, what is not, yet what will be, coincides, which creates grounds for a whole new form of sociality and with it an ethics that could actively include nature and matter, given their role in shaping the conditions of our contemporary existence.”

_{*Special issue ŠUM#12 is published in conjunction with the exhibition Adaptation to the Future curated by Aleksandra Vajd and Edith Jerabkova.}