The Explosivity of Kelp

Uncovering kelp’s hidden past as an ingredient in explosives may have the answer to preserving its future survival under climate change.

The Explosivity of Kelp, at Society & Space open site (part of a forum on everyday militarisms born from our UC Davis – U Sydney collaboratory)

Reading on spaces of the Afterblast

I was kindly invited by a creative group to join a reading/showing at E.M. Wolfman bookstore in Oakland, on Thursday May 25, 7-9pm (which cuts incredibly close to my bedtime for a school night!)

Readings and art for the human & nonhuman worlds w/ Elisabeth NiculaKate SchapiraMaya Weeks and myself. There will be projections and readings talking about (my sense so far) marine bioplastics, geologic time and representations, militancy, climate anxiety, logistics and all that.

I’ve been toying around with what I want to discuss that addresses “human and non-human” worlds, and I will probably read a few passages from my work-in-progress manuscript that deal with the spaces of the “afterblast” (after an explosion) and how such fleeting events are recorded by humans and landscapes.

Photo: US Navy, NPS Port Chicago Memorial

Explosive Cultures: Bombscapes and the Order of Law

I’m happy to mention I’ll be one of a cohort of 2018 DHI Faculty Fellows… Here’s a quick blurb of the project:

“Explosive Cultures: Bombscapes and the Order of Law”
Javier Arbona investigates the ordo: the shared spatial, imaginative, and cultural ties between the order of the explosive and the order of the law. Specifically, this project seeks to reveal the cultural landscapes—or “bombscapes”—produced by the seeming opposition, but actual co-evolution, of explosions and the legal attempts to control them.