Becoming Molecular as a Condition for Creating New Spaces of Freedom

Abstract

This volume includes texts by authors who are explicitly inspired by the ecosophical pragmatics of Félix Guattari or who resonate with it. Published in a blend of English and Spanish, the thirteen articles were written by researchers, artists, art historians, philosophers, and schizoanalysts from Asia, America, and Europe. Their methods, ideas, and approaches highlight the ability of creative practice to map and engender complex, relational, singularized, transversal, and constitutive forms of life. Departing from bold analyses of capitalism’s mechanisms of subjection, their contributions describe how art is able to resist the repressive politics of dominant representations and mobilize processes of existential heterogenesis through molecular becomings. The origin of this publication is the IV International Symposium Mutant ecologies in contemporary art: machinic capitalism, molecular beings, and subsistence territories that took place online on November 25-26, 2020, which had as special guest the philosopher and art theorist Gerald Raunig. This special issue of the Journal of Global Studies and Contemporary Art builds on the project started with the book Mutating Ecologies in Contemporary Art (Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona) which investigated the conjunction of the ecological turn in contemporary art and Guattarian ecosophy to inquire about the role of art in light of the challenges posed by the environmental degradation and the socio-political crises of today. Thirty years after Guattari’s death and the publication of Chaosmosis (1992), this collection of texts testifies that Guattari’s clinical and critical analyses continue to infuse artistic, ecological, and political practice with a revolutionary potential.