*Geno (Vessels, affect)
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*What is a beginning? Is a beginning really the/a beginning? A beginning defines —through implication— originality and authenticity. It abides by the rules of linearity by implying that there was nothing, and then there was something. Like the beginning of the Bible suggests, ‘there was darkness and then there was light’. This initial event is used as a weapon to defend origin as a ratifying and therefore binding factor. It’s a conceptual mechanism that aggressively anchors events, statements, bodies and things to terms of truth and correctness. A beginning frames historicity, an authentic narrative of what happened first that caused something to happen second that led to a third thing; a kind of generalized, chain-linked, ironclad, closed-circuit causality. A beginning can be used to indicate authenticity: ‘she used to be different…it wasn’t like this in the beginning…’ She originally was better, or worse, but she isn’t what she truly was. She’s changed, which is disobeying the original self. Beginnings also imply an end. These are quantifiers that try to harbor the untraceable in gilded, symmetrical birdcages for the sake of simplicity. Beginnings have a nostalgic air to them. They fuel retrograde behavior and sentiments: ‘wasn’t it better in the beginning, before…?’
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*If events and storytelling can be caged in by these concepts, what happens when we apply the same beginning-ending structure to more abstract phenomena? Where does affect begin? Where does a body begin? Where does technology begin? Where does the object begin? There are answers that anatomically, biologically, physically, temporally and chemically demonstrate how these things tick and where they might come from. But, they are reductions bearing horse-blinders, too focused on a simple, singular answer. Rationale will not help us bathe in the mystery that swarms like aethered mist around these questions. Beginnings are stubbornly pragmatic, pinholed, missing the point. Beginnings and endings engender a temporal anatomy, a limiting skeleton that endangers the diversity and the inherent unknowability of the world outside of us and within us.
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*In order to explore and navigate through these nebulous questions, one must let go of explanations, descriptions and normalized, irrefutable definitions. Questions regarding why we are the way we are, why we feel the way about something specific, how anomalies came to be, why that object is so horrifying to me, what really happened that day in July, why the sea mist feels so good on your face, why you’re turned on yet disgusted by that video, how someone or something can be so contradictory, why that thing is there and not over there, why something isn’t what it was, are not meant to be answered but ruminated about; we’re supposed to parallel these questions with more questions and let the answers be. The intention in this project will not be to debunk, find out and uncover. The magician will remain behind the curtain at all times. The intention is to open up poetical entrances and exits, find slits where one can slide into different forms of relating, without harming the fragility of these matters: the goal is not to perforate but to wallow in, not to excavate but to scan the substrate, not to unearth but to listen to, not to frack but to empty, not to conquer but to dialogue with, not to penetrate but to circlude[5]. 
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*The titles of the different chapters are misleading. Old Greek and Latin are languages that were used hegemonically as reference points whereas their derivatives, variants, dialects and creoles were considered vulgar and barbaric. The titles of the chapters are lexical inside-jokes. Language reduces the most complex           to intelligible, standardized semiotical evaluations; a useful tool that will, naturally, be employed in the written part of this project and can’t be avoided. The use of poetry, audiovisual tools and interactivity will be used to combat this futility, helping us slip into places of unbridled feeling. Hacking the English language is also important here. The neologisms and poeticisms sprinkled about in the essays are meant to do just that.
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*Now to begin delving into the content. In contemporary theory, it is popular to state that everything is a becoming —material, ethereal, corporal, objectual—; this proves to be an effectual opposition to the dichotomous beginning/ending narrative. This anti(?)-model of unfoldings gently nudges that everything, since forever and always, is slimily creeping towards, beneath, over, through, backward, around something in an infinite time warp of becoming; everything is jellified (not frozen) in a process; the origin is untraceable; the ouroborostic chicken and the egg causality dilemma is a dilemma caught in an eternal sappy state that will never crystalize, fossilize and become displayable amber. The sap simply keeps on dripping down its tree host. As we know from the infamous law of conservation of energy proposed by physicist Émilie du Châtelet, to say that a liquid goes from dry to wet simplifies a great deal; in fact, it is a binary simplification, many of which will be explored heavily throughout this project. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed fluidly parallels the looped, concentric, multi-level, polyphonous, radial complexity that constitutes our world. There is no beginning, there is no ending. There are only echoes of versions of recycled resonances that never cease to ring and hum. Things transform and have been doing so not just since a spatiotemporally defined ‘beginning’ with numerical coordinates as the Bible states (beginning➠end), but from a strictly abstract, circular continuum of potentiality; a humming momentum. To quote Björk’s The Modern Things: 
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*All the modern things
*Like cars and such
*Have always existed
*They've just been waiting in a mountain
*For the right moment
*Listening to the irritating noises
*Of dinosaurs and people
*Dabbling outside
*…
*All the modern things
*Have always existed
*They've just been waiting
*To come out
*And multiply
*And take over
*It's their turn now
*[6]
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*Take a break from reading, contemplate the lyrics, how do you feel?
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*Björk’s point is interesting: nothing is new, it’s all been done before or is waiting to do so but still exists anyway even if we can’t see it, what is to happen already has, what is to be already is, it’s just waiting for the opportune moment to strike, to manifest, become physical or non-physical, to be birthed, to reveal itself, to intervene, to disappear, to hide, etc. A-one-thing is a small cog in the endless web of coincidences and causes. A-one-thing is an echoey implication of the endless chain of previous things that conceived and birthed it, as it is the epitome of what it is, and at the same time a shadow or premonition of what is to come. Therefore, a-one-thing is cradled by causality. But there is yet another layer: potentiality… Potentiality combats the could have or should have been closed-circuit narrative and constitutes another conjugation that exists but chooses to resonate, to shine, to glow rather than present itself on an immediate, graspable, detectable level of spatiotemporal existence. A past or future modal configuration —could be, would be, should be— and then the so-called “modals of lost opportunity” —could’ve, should’ve, would’ve— usually indicate feelings of regret, confusion, anxiety and crossroads when used; a kind of glass-half-empty, distorted view of a contradictory past-potentiality, as if potentiality could become extinct. ‘Something potentially could have made me happy, but can nevermore.’ But the can be, will be, shall be explores another conjugation system that, obviously, designates a future-facing, ever-extant potentiality. This is the kind of conjugation that dissident bodies, for example, feed off of: ‘I can be this body, and many more.’ As well as objects: ‘I will be shattered and become something else.’
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*As we know from postmodern theory, things don’t just exist in their physical state. They resonate and echo. They change the course and direction of circumstance. They configure happenstances. They ignite, push, pull, blow, impede, redirect, sway. Their impact, footprints and traces live on in the form of a ringing that, in some cases, quiet with time. But they don’t end. The Chicxulub impactor that struck the Earth 66 million years ago lives on not through the immediate shock waves it caused but in the form of underwater tunnels which are channels for life, an absence of many different species which gave way for our current world, a basin that cradles coral and trees which hosts innumerable species, archeological studies founded around the investigation of the impact, articles and photographs that speculate on what happened there, the fact that I am writing about it right now, etc. This is the ring, this is the hum. Needless to say, things would be very different without the meteorite strike. The roots of what the impact has caused continue to grow, its ring refuses to dull.
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*I begin with these sentiments to show how diverse and contrasted different levels of non-biological/physical existence and presence are and how they tend to go unnoticed and misunderstood. That which is biological and physical has been the reigning protagonist and focus throughout human history. When we think of things typically, we imagine them on one level: their surface or their current state before our eyes, or what they do, did do and then ceased to do. (According to potentiality and processuality, nothing ceases, nothing ends.) Yes, there is a very inquisitive bunch of people who may enjoy an object, for example, on a more technical level, aware of its inner-workings and mechanical-material composition. But even they may be missing very important bits. For most, enjoyment depends on the object’s simple, superficial functionality (an aspect I will compare to bodies later on), in other words: ‘what can this object do for me? How will it make my life easier?’ This is, again, a limited, pinholed vision of how complex things and animals are. Humans are not just their anatomy. Similarly, objects are not just their functionality (to play around with David Lynch’s owls, ‘the objects are not what they seem’). We know this from intangible concepts; concepts that aren’t easily manifested in form or word, similar to Alfred Whitehead’s eternal objects. We call them feelings, emotions, senses, erotics, affects, aethers, chromatics, hunches, urges, resonances, sonics, echos… The eerie air that perfumes the harrowing mysteries which form a part of the Sensual World.
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*Great misunderstandings of these mysteries have resulted in violence, rejection, reduction, simplification, belittlement (literally: to ‘make be little’), undermining, feelings of horror, abjection, resentment, and so on, against both bodies without organs and bodies with organs which receive similar harmful treatment. The roots of racism, xenophobia, global warming, pollution, fascism and queerphobia are deeply buried in these misunderstandings, in these simplified approaches to our neighbors that coexist with us. So this seemingly abstract argument about potentiality, existence and non-biological life extends outward and around, thus choreographing a pulsating, transversal ethno-socio-eco-political grandness. If we explore our affective relationships with objects (and theirs with ours), will this lead us to being more empathetic with the world in general? More eco-conscious? More attuned? Better to one another? More accepting of differences? Magic is in everything, omnipresent. We just have to find the right angle when looking at the things around us which, through abstraction and simile, may help us not simply understand but embrace, accept and merge.
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*Talking more specifically about the focus of this project, what are affective vessels? Have you ever felt a texture or material that surprised you? Maybe a business card made of a dusty satin varnished paper or a tree trunk that was just too soft and spongy? Have you ever purchased a small object because of its unexpected weight? Have you ever described an object with a sound? Have you ever felt erotically toward a piece of furniture? Have you ever had the urge to lick or chew something that isn’t food? Have you ever heard rhythms emitted from textures? Have you ever been horrified by an object? or by a body? or by a practice? or by a fusion of object and body? or by an objectification of a body? or by an anthropocation of an object? In the Spanish language, a curious expression is used to describe an object that doesn’t quite convince them: ‘no huele, literally, ‘it doesn’t smell’. In English, one tends to ask ‘how do you feel about            ?’       or ‘how does           make you feel?’ which essentially asks us to evaluate something with the general somatic afferent fibers of our central nervous systems. ‘What is your gut feeling about this?’ These somatic afferent fibers conduit abstract or concrete information from sensory neurons that travel up and down our spinal cord, transmitting information to our brain. They act as vessels that carry this information from one place to another. This culminates in a process called transduction, where we translate visual or physical stimuli into a concept that we process in our brains which then leads us to acting or not, or making an opinion or evaluation of something. The somatosensory (or somaesthetic) system is of importance in this process as it is made up of sensory neurons that help us detect changes in pressure, texture, temperature and height haptically, but not necessarily affectively. Regarding objects and our feelings towards them: there is a pragmatically describable physiological system that we use to digest
* and evaluate the world around us. Regardless, there is still mystery: why does that specific vase make one feel that specific way in this very moment? Why does that fabric make one feel averse towards it? Why does the sound of that glass rubbing on the surface of that counter make us cringe? Can this be reduced to an explanation or an answer or psychology? What if it’s better described as a kind of dialectical affect between our aura and theirs? Furthermore, is affect a way to describe the in-between, the abstract value that things emit that rubs against other emittances? 
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*Take a break from reading, how do you feel?
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*The word ‘affect’ in psychology describes the emotion and desire that influences behavior, the way that we cognitively or somatically process and intuit the world around us which culminates in a feeling, behavior, opinion, etc. It parallels the neural, sensory process I described before: stimuli we detect haptically, visually, somatically, acoustically or olfactorally runs through our neurons, arriving at the brain where they are digested and used to decide how one reacts to a-one-thing or a situation. The difference is the difficulty to describe exactly what it is, what is happening psychologically. Is it solely cognitive? Does affect work on a neural level? There are discrepancies whether affect is pre-cognitive or post-cognitive. Does affect occur when we initially come into contact with things? Or when we’ve had time to process them after the fact? Maybe these questions are subjective and banal. Does it matter how affect works? Or when it ‘occurs’? Or why? Affect is. We respond emotively to things. Affect helps us navigate through this world, and defines how we relate to it. In the words of Gregory J. Seigworth and Melissa Gregg, “affect is in many ways synonymous with force or forces of encounter…[I]t is quite likely that affect more often transpires within and across the subtlest of shuttling intensities: all the minuscule or molecular events of the unnoticed. The ordinary and its extra-. Affect is born in in-between-ness and resides as accumulative beside-ness. Affect can be understood then as a gradient of bodily capacity—a supple incrementalism of ever-modulating force-relations—that rises and falls not only along various rhythms and modalities of encounter but also through the troughs and sieves of sensation and sensibility…”[7]. More anon.
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*Now what is a vessel? Easy, right? Anything that naturally can or is made to hold something else on any level is a vessel. The letter ‘v’, its initial letter, is interestingly enough, in the form of the commonly defined vessel. This letter is shared in other European languages: vaixell, vasija, vaisseau, vascello, vasilha, vaartuig, veesõiduk, vas, vzducholoď. Notice how this particular letter is positioned verticality and has an open top to prepare it for reception. The closed base might keep anything from slipping out though the open top may allow for something to evaporate and dry up. It’s symmetrical, balanced. It can stand up on its own, therefore, autonomous. Now say the word ‘vessel’ slowly. Feel how it vibrates the lips at first, how the air passes through the slim opening of the mouth, how the throat opens and quavers. Then, the flat ‘e’ sound comes along. It’s a sound that makes you sing when sustained and dragged out. Then the hissing of the ‘ss’s. Notice how, when sustained, the sound slightly differs and oscillates as the air passes at different strengths through the lips and the teeth. Now, the last ‘e’ comes around again, mirroring the first ‘e’ yet it gets curved in the end of the sound by the last letter: the ‘l’. The tongue rises in a serpentine curve, and the sound becomes guttural, pushing the emphasis back to the throat. Now say it a bit faster. Notice how the sound and the use of different parts of the mouth rock back and fourth, pushing from the lips with the ‘v’, extending out of the mouth with the ‘e’, returning back to the teeth for the ‘ss’s, and retreating with the unstressed ‘e’ and ending back in the throat with the ‘l’. 
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*Take a break from reading.
*How do we feel about this word and its sound?
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*Some possible ways to describe a vessel:
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*_ it can be or is like a recipient or a ship or a receiver or a conserver or a holder or a container or a reserve or a pond or a pool or a pitcher or a jar or a cup a carrier or a supporter or a bowl or a harbor or a goblet
*_ a three-dimensional object (?)
*_ hollow on the inside (?)
*_ non- porous (?)
*_ passive (?) 
*_ a hollowed mass (?)
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*As we see, it’s easier to find objects or synonyms or use similes to help describe what a vessel is than it is to define definitive physical properties. A vessel is like a recipient. Does a vessel have to permanently carry something? Is it always a vessel? Is receiving something and carrying something a passive role? Could a vessel be seen as a facilitator? An incubator? A resting place? A nest? A harbinger? A conjuror? An intermediary? A mediator? A metaphor? A simile in itself?
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*In 1996, Catalan artist and mediator Eulàlia Valldosera conjured up a project entitled Envasos: El culte a la mare (Containers: Worshiping the mother) which sought to reflect on the feminist prowess of the vessel, as well as commenting on its historical bastardization. The vessel used to be synonymous with the matriarchy: “containers of vital fluids for the survival of the community”, which “women fabricated and possessed control over…Now they contain chemical soaps”, in the words of the artist[8]. Behind everyday detergent and shampoo bottles, the artist placed a projector which casted massive silhouettes on the walls, recalling the human form: upright, genderless, opaque, diaphanous, curvaceous, full of something, processual. She lets the vessel take on a totemic activation as it reaches heights twice the size of the average human body. They loom over us, reminding us of their indispensable use.
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*Thinking of a vessel in non-objectual terms may give us clues to understanding how everything, including the animal body, is a vessel, following an eternal Russian doll cycle of constant layering, and constant unfolding. Are there answers in the word itself? In its etymology? Maybe not. But in its vibrations when spoken, there are many stories, great depth and fierce diversity to this thing. One never says ‘vessel’ the same way twice. No one vessel is totally identical. Even if two vases’ measurements are the same, fabricated in the same factory with the same white plastic, there are small, possibly undetectable variances and inconsistencies (which one may call ‘errors’). The petroleum used to make said plastic may hail from different petrochemical plants and different oil wells. Regardless, vessels take on, they perdure, absorb, crackle. Like Gaetano Pesce’s vases, they are things that are affected much like any other subjectual body. In addition to holding, vessels can be strange, layered, textured, fractured and “withdrawn” to quote Timothy Morton[9]. Pesce enhances the vibrant latency of the vase with oozing glass, globs of silicone, thorny resin, drizzling liquid, coiling matter. It’s as if these vases were ‘stuck’, or better put, sustained in their processuality. Just as glass is in fact a glacially slow moving liquid, the vases seem to be mutating before our very eyes, heading towards something, becoming something they weren’t. This seeming ‘illusion’ of motion that we see aesthetically and texturally on the surface is in fact an echo of our mutual motion in the sphere of potentiality, the push forward, which also echoes or more precisely, parallels and dialogues with the animal body’s own in-between-ness (decay/regenesis). So the Pesce vase is a mirrored version of how we are; a layered mass, a fleshy carrier, a potential anything, a sentient orb. Again, this motion is what we share with all subjects. Erin Manning imagines a “space-time re-troduced [that] co
*uld be thought as a becoming-body of touch, an engagement with processes already in motion. Body and object are no longer distinct, they ally in process, traversing space-time, re-creating themselves and/as space-time as/in movement. This is tango: an event in a politics of touch”[10]. This tango, this dance, this dialogue is our affective and relational common ground with all subjects of the Sensual World. Even elementary particles dance and exchange: when a particle leaves an atom, a hole is left to be filled by other forces or particles which choreographs an erratic, unpredictable and promiscuous dance. And it is potential that pushes current and makes these particles jump around. This is the fluttering pulse where we find our convergence, the jitter that pushes us toward possibility.
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*Before I dive too deep into this cycle of thought, let’s go back to Russian dolls and ruminate about their structure. To use a simile: Russian dolls look like humans but are objects. Are they humanized objects? Anthropomorphic concatenations? Aside from this, they serve as a wonderful visual to the inquiries regarding vessels. They are literally bodies within bodies. The game is to unveil, yes, but also to put back together. This questions the notion of wholeness. When is she whole? When put back together? Is the little peanut of a doll at the center of the object a whole as well without the other layers? Are each individual vessels wholes themselves? Another point of focus: how are these dolls painted? Typically, with traditional, folkloric wear. They usually depict characters from fairytales, from old Russian myths. This is immediately interesting; their allure comes from their otherness; their familiarity and their foreignness. In a way, these dolls are myths; they are stories within stories within stories; like an endlessly looped fable that keeps telling itself in different ways over and over. You never unveil the Matryoshka the same way twice: there are differences in how fast you take it apart, where you place the pieces, different details you notice in each layer, the different affective states you’re in, etc. Like a story that transmutes with time, each time it’s told, the storyteller inserts themselves into the narrative when telling folktales, maybe they can’t remember exactly what happened when. It doesn’t matter. This is a part of a myth; the magic lies in its malleability and unknowability, its ever-changing and looping resonance. Magic is the capacity for one thing to alter, mutate right before our very eyes or glacially over time just as stories and objects do.
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*Folklore is magic, storytelling is magic, similes are magic, malleability is magic, affect is magic, objects are magic, vessels are magic.
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*How do you feel after this statement?