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DAY TWO! SYMBIOGENESIS - IN THE BETWEEN Neuroqueer theory & the Posthuman - Symposium Held at RMIT, School of Art (Melbourne) & online • Our second in person/hybrid day was intimate and filled with many moments of connection, care and the sharing of knowledge. • Don't worry if you missed it, we are working on sharing some of the recordings + a print iteration of the event! • #neuroqueer + #Posthuman • 📷By @b.leideritz • @posthumanpress @cathypetocz @minxdragon

Upon returning from this year's Posthuman Summer Lab, I fortuitously found this book waiting for me on my doorstep. Taking up the textual embodiment of Burroughs' word virus, @kenjisiratori raises language to the level of a multispecies pathogen that infects and reroutes the perception of the reader. Here, they also reveal their method via sign and symbol. The book was released as part of @zoetica 's recent exhibition, Aberrant Plexus, which visually and experientially appeared like a more-than-human sequel to Żuławski's 'On the Silver Globe'. In lineage of artists like Artaud and inspired by butoh, Zoetica Ebb conceptualised the idea of the psychogametous: information that is transmitted via a host and then reshapes the cognition of the receiver via symbolic metabolism—a kind of signifying world sharing that mutates other worlds and leaves the human "I" destabilised, or, rather, uncovers the lie that we were ever stable in the first place. There are only 11 hand-numbered tomes of this book in existence, and this is the only one that's a signed living edition altered by Zoetica over two months by a slow process of biological interference. I decided to wait before opening up the package immediately, however, as I knew my friend @esteningxo would appreciate it. Not a fan of surprises, they began guessing what I was bringing over: E: "Is it a puppy?" B: "It is a living entity, but it's not a puppy." E: "It's not anthrax is it?" B: "Close." Haha. They freaked out a second time when I then opened it up in front of them and pulled out the pathology specimen bag, haha. Too funny. We love you E. And thank you Kenji and Zoetica for this wonderful book. 🫶✨️ . . #kenjisiratori #zoeticaebb #psychogametous #posthumanliterature #wordvirus

2025 highlights, from Vietnam/Cambodia to a road trip around Aus, ending the year in Poland and Germany with my partner, and many wonderful times with friends in-between. Plus, my press published our first book. ✨️ 2nd pic = books I liked this year. Gigs i went to in '25: Jeffrey Lewis, Spike Fuck, Anohni, Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Oasis. Favourite film I saw: Knight of Cups Favourite 2025 music releases: Geese - Getting Killed; Dean Blunt & Elias Rønnenfelt - Lucre . . . #2025inreview #vietnamtravels #ausroadtrip #anohni #posthumansummerlab

I still can't believe I got a bad fever last year on the night The The finally toured Australia. I'd purchased my tickets in 2023 waiting a year in anticipation only to be bedridden on gig night... which almost seems fitting. I've talked about this album before being a top ten album, an early example of New Sincerity, as well as the soundtrack to my 20's. But now instead of "waiting for tomorrow", I'm waiting to get better, productivity taking the place of existential despair and self-doubt where healing is now what gets postponed in a capitalist achievement society. Some of the lyrics now appear to me almost as a luxury of a simpler, more insecure time—one that still believed in the idea of the outsider. And yet, the album still hits because of its brutal honesty, its poetic lyricism and groovy melody. I love how, just like with 'Purple Mountains', the despairing lyrics are at odds with the uplifting melody, which causes a sense of catharsis because of the singer's vulnerability to speak their truth. An essential album. A veritable classic of the human condition. Go listen if you haven't. "You were emotionally independent but starved of affection But now you've been trapped by tenderness And beaten into submission." . . . #thethe #soulmining #newsincerity #existentialdespair #postpunkalbum #essentialalbum

Favourite reads of 2024 (+ fave album/film) Guess what! I finally beat my reading addiction! 🙌 Literally haven't finished a book since the start of August, which is crazy for me. Though, I guess this year I've been reading more academic papers for reading groups than actual books. I don't know about you, but I'm personally over the lies of fiction. As soon as I returned home from Australia's first posthuman camp this year, I discarded the novel I'd been reading. I now only wanted to be materially engaged with life. The sole artworks I actually enjoy are those that confront reality and don't offer an escape. This is why my favourite reads this year ended up being mostly non-fiction, but even the three novels pictured here felt like creative non-fiction. 1) Dear Senthuran by @yungdeadthing . An incredible non-binary memoir told as a series of letters to friends dealing with themes of spirituality and suicide. 2) The Fifth Wound by Aurora Mattia - an incredibly well-written novel that mythologises trans experience, attacks Empire, and deals with the author's trauma. Push past the first section as it's like a litmus test to see if you can make it past the author's style. 3) Tyson Yunkaporta - Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World. Essential! Critiques Western society through an Indigenous lens. Told with an engaging conversational style. 4) Giorgio Agamben - When the House Burns Down. A few essays by the Italian philosopher about the ineffectuality of language, reducing to labels, and being so close to life the abstractions fall away. 5) The Fire Within - Louis Malle's film absolutely destroyed me some years ago because I felt so much like the protagonist. Perhaps the film is slightly more affective, but still a good read if you're up for something depressing. 6) Porchia's 'Voices' - one of the best collections of aphorisms I've read! Thanks again for the rec @mt.pensum ! 7) Daumal's spiritual letters. Well worth the read. Simultaneously beautiful and insightful. 8) More Daumal crushing dogmas and negating illusory ideologies of thought. 9) Marcelle Sauvageot's 'Commentary', ~90 year old feminist gem, a mini masterpiece of the heart. #bestof2024

2024 photo bomb I won't mince words. This year has been rough. A mixture of going through the motions of trauma, while finding a beautiful community and spaces for healing. Thank you Georgia, Brooke, Maria, Armani, Nina, Tarik and Anni. Thank you for holding me, while I fell to pieces. Thank you for all the new friendships that unwittingly healed me through your care: Matt and Olive, Michael, Rainbow, Hazel, Dylan, Luna, Luca, Kieran, Charlene, Ombre, Gabby, Myra, En, and all friends of old: David, Sam, Jayden, Seth, Cat and V. Forgive me if I missed anyone. Let us embrace the specificity over a generalisation. I am also deeply grateful for my new posthuman communities and reading groups, as well as my Gurdjieff and Dzogchen groups. Currently, I am editing my manuscript, trying to get a book cover design done that I actually like, building up my press, and trying to assemble a crew for a film, along with other mini writing projects. 1-3) Italian Posthuman Summer Camp 4-5) Before Sunrise-like exploration around Bologna with my dear friend and co-editor @mpdelportillo 6) Posthuman LARP 7) Spike Fuck 8) Favourite director (and one of the only people I know with similar taste to me) 9) Album of the year/decade 10-11) New bookshelves 12) Dzogchen community waiting for sunrise to experience the direct perception of dharmatā 13) Plant propagation bioassembly 14) Australian Posthuman Summer Camp - facilitators were so unorganised they never shared any of the group photos, so I'm sharing this beautiful caterpillar from the camp instead. 🫶 15) Essential book I think everyone should read 16) Dumb photo of me and bestie at the shops 17) Alex Cameron 18-19) Author 📷's by @sadsappysuckerrr 20) Still alive post-suicide hotline call

Author Spotlight: David Foster Wallace I never posted about it, but two years ago in celebration of DFW's 60th birthday I went ahead and read back-to-back pretty much the remainder of everything I hadn't yet read (yes, even the maths book, though never the rap one 😅). Included in this marathon were a few interview books and his bio. Now, what does one say about a person whose work single-handedly altered the very fibre of your being and caused a monumental shift in perspective and presence? The first thing the hipsters remark on is either his style or humour, but these don't speak to DFW's essential core and what he was trying to achieve, and only serves to ironically set oneself up as the target of everything DFW was warning against, his art so entertaining it becomes reduced to entertainment. I once spoke to such a hipster who didn't like 'This is Water' because it was "too clichéd and platitudinous," the abstraction in his head given greater preference over the importance of meaningfully performing acts to overcome self-absorption in our day-to-day lives, and so likely remains solipsistically self-absorbed to the end. Needless to say, what makes DFW great is the human factor underlying all his work from 'Infinite Jest' onwards (for he wasn't really DFW until then). Addiction to entertainment; a need for vulnerability and sincerity; overcoming self-absorption, abstractions, and learning to sit with boredom. These are a few of the ontologically significant themes elevating DFW's work beyond the pervasive meaningless irony, hipster coolness, and superficial entertainment. He never failed to probe so deeply that it directs us to reach for better ways of being. The second photo reveals all my favourites including the film 'The End of the Tour'. I sold everything else. The only favourite piece that's missing is the story 'Good Old Neon', which I hope is one day released on its own as I didn't like the collection 'Oblivion' overall. It's late right now but I'm awake as ever, thanks to you David. I love you very much and often miss your voice. . . . . . . #authorspotlight #dfw #davidfosterwallace #thisiswater

"Author" spotlight: René Daumal René Daumal was a French mystic and poet whose sole goal as a writer was to awaken everyone into perceiving the true Absolute self beyond the constructed selves we falsely treat as real. Daumal commenced their journey at a young age experimenting with drugs before co-founding the incredible literary journal 'Le Grand Jeu', which to me was far greater than anything that came out of the surrealist movement. Here, Daumal revolted against all ideologies and anything that limited consciousness. They were striving after the universal. Soon after Daumal was introduced to the work of Gurdjieff and they began performing the exercises ritually. Daumal steadily kept writing and mountain climbing in-between health complications from an infected lung caused by the carbon tetrachloride they'd inhaled in their youth (as a way to approach death while still remaining conscious), but it ultimately caused their premature death at the age of 36. Daumal's spiritual allegory 'Mount Analogue' was left unfinished mid sentence, and is often seen as a journey the reader must now complete on their own. But Daumal wasn't a typical writer of the solipsistic sort, they are one of the rare, humble ones who had no illusions, for they were never deluded by a false personality or sense of self; they were writing from a universal, not an I: "The task is to continue writing (at least, finish what I've begun) without becoming a writer. There is in art a diabolical element because the "pleasure" factor is indispensable. If I write without pleasure like a schoolboy doing homework, it can't help but be bad. But if I surrender to pleasure, I'm lost. The pleasure must only serve as the sign of doing well what must be done, I shouldn't delight in it." So who is René Daumal? I am René Daumal, René Daumal is me. We who have negated self and all identity are the same nameless not-I harkening back to the ancient mystics and residing in the universal, the essence beyond personality. Daumal is a true spiritual peer. Check out @posthumanpress that'll pick up where they left off, that will repeat and operate within the same universal beyond all limits.

Author spotlight: Louis Aragon Before David Foster Wallace moved away from hipster irony in favour of sincerity and emotional intelligence, before B.S. Johnson reinvigorated the avant-garde with truth and meaning, Louis Aragon first broke away from Dada and the automatic writing of the surrealists—which largely consisted of imagery for the sake of imagery—by creating surrealist texts of far greater substance. Louis Aragon was by far the greatest surrealist that ever was, and one of my all-time favourite writers/thinkers. Here's what I love about Aragon: the refusal of categorisation; the subversion of expectations; the surrealist imagery that never strays too far from meaning; and, of course, the introspective and poetic abstractions, a mind unleashed on the page, leaping from one idea to the next. But what I also admire about Aragon is the way in which they make their personality felt through the pages. Regardless of style or form, plotting or language choice, that for me is a sign of good writing: when I can hear their voice explode through the text beyond what's happening in the story(/"story"). It's not solely in the telling. It's also in how you tell it. And I'd happily take Aragon's telling any day over anyone that submits to the traditional laws of ballistics. I'll be selling the top three here and keeping the bottom three, which are my favourites: — Paris Peasant — Irene's Cunt — Treatise on Style I also enjoyed Aragon's short surrealist treaty 'A Wave of Dreams' (OOP, but available online), which was published in 1924 preceding Bréton's Surrealist Manifesto, as well as Agnès Varda's beautiful 20 min doco 'Elsa la rose' about Aragon and their partner Elsa. Aragon was also bisexual and after Elsa's death lived openly as a homosexual and could even be seen in the 1970's riding in a pink convertible in gay pride parades. 💜 . . . #louisaragon #surrealbooks #outofprint #greatestsurrealistever #authorspotlight #elsalarose #1920sbooks #irenescunt #creationbooks

A surrealist triptych. Here's my top three surrealist novels, all in first editions: — Louis Aragon's 'Paris Peasant' — Leonora Carrington's 'The Hearing Trumpet' — René Daumal's 'Mount Analogue' Aside from each of these extending beyond surrealism as a genre, being far more than just "surreal", what each of these also have in common—you should know by now which way my taste leans—is that they all contain a lot of substance, albeit in markedly different ways. There's Aragon with the metaphysical abstractions, Carrington with the mystical transcendence, and Daumal with a spiritual allegory. Unfortunately, Daumal died mid sentence before completing 'Mount Analogue', but it's still a wonderful novel, and almost fitting that it was left unfinished as it allows the reader to continue their spiritual journey beyond the text along the path Daumal paved. I would also like to give a shout out to Exact Change, founded by the band members of Galaxy 500, for originally publishing these surrealist gems. It's thanks to small presses like them that we can affordably access such obscure and out of print titles. Feel free to leave your own favourite surrealist novel in the comments. . . . . . #surrealist #surrealistnovel #surrealbooks #louisaragon #leonoracarrington #renedaumal #spiritualbooks #rarebooks #1stedition #exactchange #bookstagramaustralia #smallpress #mountanalogue #parispeasant #thehearingtrumpet

Don't see enough love for this album so thought I'd share. Recorded in the early 70's when Caetano Veloso was living in exile in England, 'Transa' is my favourite solo album that Veloso recorded and one of the best from the 70's, period. It's sung partly in English and Portuguese, a fractured symbol of the loneliness Veloso felt whilst separated from Brazil, and especially emphasised in the beautiful opening track "You Don't Know Me". 'Transa' is also one of my favourite jammin' albums up there with Link Wray's 1971 S/T album, Tim Buckley's 'Greetings from LA', and The Velvet Underground's 'Loaded', etc. The way the music keeps building up, slowing down and building up again, especially on the songs "Triste Bahia" and "It's a Long Way," is fantastic. Tropicália/MPB is one of my favourite styles of music. This album, as well as the defining album of the tropicália movement, 'Tropicália: Ou Panis et Circensis', which was recorded by a supergroup that included Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Os Mutantes et al., are both essential albums everyone needs to hear/own. . . . . #Tropicália #tropicalia #mpb #transa #caetanoveloso #jamminalbum #jammingmusic #70salbums #vinylcommunitypost #portuguesemusic #exile

Farewell Rodriguez, one of the greatest social issues poets up there with Dylan, Kev Carmody, Gil Scott-Heron, Patti Smith and Willie Dunn. In 2014, I was fortunate enough to have front row seats to see Rodriguez live. You could literally smell the marijuana backstage, Rodriguez likely lighting up before making his entrance with, I believe, 'Sugar Man'. I still won't forget his inimitable swagger as he performed a wonderful rendition of Peggy Lee's 'Fever'. He was a little frail, but performed with the greatest of spirit. A few years ago, I also managed to find a 1978 Aus pressing of 'Cold Fact' on vinyl at an op shop for $1. And can we also quickly address the incredible symbolism of the cover: Rodriguez sitting in his own bubble where society's bullshit can't touch him. It's one of the most fitting album designs that so perfectly encapsulates the content within. Easily one of my favourite albums with such a unique folk rock sound. His story is somewhat of a tragedy, too, as he fell into obscurity after completing two albums, but was fortunately granted the recognition he rightfully deserved with the release of the excellent doco 'Searching for Sugar Man'. . . . . #Rodriguez #coldfact #cultalbum #folkrock #fivestarreview #essentialalbum #socialissues #musicpoetry #opshopfinds #sugarman