For our next Reading Matters we are going online for a three-part series reading Where Does A Body Begin? Biology’s Function In Contemporary Capitalism (3rd edition) written anonymously "Meltdown Your Books" a.k.a "S.R.", as part of their Ph.D studies in Evolutionary Biology.

Like the last, Reading Matters: Bacteria to AI, this series furthers some of the topics and discussions taking place within Bioart Society’s deCYPher project which links AI, ML and Symbio, and supports artists to develop research within the projects framework. 

Synopsis (via publishers Becoming Press):

In this book, we don’t do biology, or fund it, or research it, or practice it; in this book, we are biology.

While presented as a contiguous work, the book is formed of different essays that have been dissected, recomposed with artificial connective tissue. [...] These essays each grow out of a particular resentment that developed through years of experience as a working-student of biology, but the task of the book was to transform this into something productive, something that sticks granular propositions into Biology like acupuncture needles. 

In what could be perceived as a philosophical turn, the importance of talking about science, as much as doing it, is re-entering the popular scientific consciousness, and it is high time, too. What was already getting bad under Biden, became catastrophic under Trump, and the infiltration into public research by private institutions and capitalist enterprises, which this book highlights, is proving dire. The capitalisation of all things bio, whether -yoghurt, -metric data or -logical institutions, is necrotic—MeltdownYourBooks didn’t flinch, they just grabbed the scalpel, dowsed the flesh in ethanol, and asked the question we all forget needs answering: where first, Doc? 
 

Session 1, Thursday 26 March 18:00-19:30
Reading (39 pages*):
Introduction: forewords and reflections xv-xxix
Chapter 1: Introspections p.1-12
Chapter 2: Ontology p.13-30

Session 2, Thursday 16 April 18:00-19:30
Reading (42 pages*) 
Chapter 3: Utility p.31-42
Chapter 4: Cybernetics
1–An Ontological Order  p.43-58
2–A Political Order  p.59-73

Session 3, Thursday 21 May 18:00-19:30
Reading (27 pages*):
Chapter 5: Systems Biology p.73-84
Postscript: Neural Networks and AΙ  p.85-90
Endnotes  p.91-100

*Please note it is a pocket book and the pages are roughly A6 size.

We encourage reading the text(s) in advance and, if possible, joining all three sessions, but neither are compulsory. In the session we will read sections of the text and it is possible to only attend one session.

All three sessions take place online. To receive the zoom link and a copy of the text in advance contact Yvonne.billimore@bioartsociety.fi at least two days before the session occurs. 

About the author

Meltdown Your Books (M.Y.B.), the pen name, was made as a portmanteau of the seminal essay Meltdown by Nick Land, and the landmark film Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets by Shuji Terayama. I chose the name, almost 3 years ago now, to reflect the political and digital black hole I saw hovering at the edge of contemporary media experience, and to present my work without the muddy veneer of personal identity. It has remained, since its inception, an anonymous project in only the loosest terms. The dedicated could always find my real identity, and some have, and so its anonymous character existed primarily as an element of presentation. Its anonymity existed to emphasize its deindividuated character. The things I discuss and emphasize under the M.Y.B. label are not items with definitive characteristics, they are collective experiences. M.Y.B. is something I cherish beyond self.