Radical mycologists and poets offer ruminations on rot as sustenance for growth. Lecture-experiments draw from metaphors of the mushroom: the fleshy spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus that troubles the distinction between singular and collective.
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William Padilla Brown / Tiny intricate things

cordyceps -- zombie mushroom -- parasite -- host tissue -- aphrodisiac -- oxygen

manuel arturo abreu / My screen protector is definitely the dirtiest part of my body

Rot Semantics -- decayed teeth -- out of the death of metaphors -- glitch -- entheogeny -- ‘spoiled’ energy -- reanimating the undead -- divination

Cecilia Vicuña / pitch, a fertile / rite / a little / broken pitch / er

precarios -- basuritas -- ecological destruction -- PALABRARmas -- unravelling words

Tracie Morris, originally programmed into this event, will be presenting an offsite sound installation at a location and date TBD.

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ROT TALKS is an experimental lecture series and decomposition class for the end times on the poetics of rot and the arts of breaking down. Guided by compost as metaphor and method, poet-artist-researchers of rot offer strategies to delight in ferment, heal a hurting earth, and exhibit a playful devotion to detritus and discard, at the level of land and of language.

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Public Health Precautions

This is tentatively planned as a live outdoor event at St. Mark's Church. We are following (and exceeding) recommendations laid out by NY State for outdoor gatherings. These include: limiting the number of attendees to under 50; setting up seating with fixed and socially distant spacing; requiring and providing face masks, as well hand sanitizer stations. We will have 3 microphones on hand, and will be rotating / sanitizing these between readings. Attendees are required to register in advance, and contact information is collected at the point of registration in the event that we need to support any public health efforts around contact tracing. We are grateful to attendees for helping us maintain safety within our present public health context, and look forward to holding meaningful shared listening space together.