Semionautics x Subtexts present
David’s Transterranean Dream
24 March 2021, 8pm EST / midnight GMT
Montez Press Radio
An auditory experience brought to you by Semionautics and Subtexts, two projects toeing the line between fact and fabulation to explore natural phenomena and the syncretic now.
Writings and readings by Eloise Bennett, Silvia Bombardini, Andrew Copolov, James Hendrix Elsey, Arthur Gouillart, Alasdair Milne, George Finlay Ramsay, Siegrun Salmanian and Elaine Tam.
Audio production by Andrew Copolov, James Hendrix Elsey, Alasdair Milne and Elaine Tam.
David turns off the radio report special, suddenly recalling the mysterious USB he found, still lying at the bottom of his rucksack. An inexplicable force compels him to retrieve it, he hums to himself as he plugs it in, waiting for the computer to boot up. In its directory is a lone folder entitled “subtexts”, typed in lowercase. He double-clicks it. What begins as benign curiosity leads to a very strange discovery...
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Section 1.1
Semionautics Report: Eclipse, an audio mix counterposing different eclipse readings inspired by the thought of Stanislaw Lem. Produced on the occasion of Summa Technologiae, a pedagogical investigation organized by e-flux & Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
Section 1.2
A sampler of readings from Subtexts, forthcoming:
Subtexts is a book about caves – a collection of speleological art writing, an earthward analytical offshoot exploring this natural phenomenon within the framework of the 'geopoetic'. Unlike the vast, unknowable underworld, the field in which human activities take place is but a thin film on the Earth’s surface. Taking this as their starting point, the writings delve towards telluric intensities and chaotic psychic states, while testifying to the impossibility of making literate the profound mysteries of deep time. Despite our technological mastery across Nature’s superficial crust layer, things below ground must be left to fate. Subtexts is the attempt of fourteen writers to interpret and interpolate sub-earthen hollows, giving silhouette to what lurks beneath.
Edited with a preface by Robin Mackay, the project is funded by the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London.