Monstrous algae meets gentrification: a Tale of Invasion
More than ever today, nature has become inseparable from culture; and if we are to understand the interactions between ecosystems, the mechanosphere, and the social and individual universes of reference, we have to learn to think ‘transversaly’. As the waters of Venice are invaded by monstrous, mutant algae, so our television screens are peopled and saturated by ‘degenerate’ images and utterances. In the realm of social ecology.
Donald Trump and his ilk -another form of algae - are permitted to proliferate unchecked. In the name of renovation, Trump takes over whole districts of New York or Atlantic City, raises rents, and squeezes out tens of thousands of poor families. Those who Trump condemns to homelessness are the social equivalent of the dead fish of environmental ecology.
Felix Guattari, Three Ecologies, 1989
Invitations to contemplate these words and play with your thoughts
What captured our attention
What if we tell a different history
What if “Nature” does not exist
What if we invent an ecosystemic economy
What do you think?
Where does Europe begin and Where does Europe end
Collections that include this source
Imagine an Ecosystemic Europe
Imagine an Altereurope
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Cross Idea
We would ask to transform and reform the modalities of membership by which the city (cité) belongs to the state, as in a developing Europe or in international juridical structures still dominated by the inviolable rule of state sovereignty […] This should no longer be the ultimate horizon for citie …
# 5
Doppiozero, Online Magazine: Unquoted Image
Every image in the Alterlibrary collection is intended as a quote, an excerpt of a larger discourse. But every image also stands as a matter that could undergo a series of operations and alterations. Therefore, images are renewable sources.
Operations: Extraction and Collection. First, it was taken out of its original digital context and collections (the magazine and broader web) and placed into this particular archive via the technical operation of screenshot—effectively shifting its belonging from one public space to another.
Image alteration: manipulation in Photoshop:
A partial selection was made, isolating only part of the visible scene and thus altering the substance of the original image.
After “cutting out” this portion, a blank area remained on the canvas. That void was automatically filled using Photoshop’s AI-driven tool, which sampled the remaining visible elements to generate a new patch of imagery following a similar pattern.
Halftone Conversion: Finally, the modified image was transformed into a halftone layer—a print-inspired technique that uses a grid of small, varying dots to simulate continuous tones. Historically, halftone processes were crucial in newspaper and magazine production, enabling photographs to be reproduced using a pattern of ink dots rather than solid blocks of color or grayscale.
Remains and fragments, points of a lecture, pieces of reality, amounts of appearance: whenever we read an image, are we free to investigate its possible meaning and its relationship to a given reality? Things from a distance may appear differently.
This photograph, sourced from an online Italian magazine called Doppiozero, has been easily downloaded from the website and added to the collection Opacity of Images. Its original function was to illustrate an article about the death of migrants navigating the Mediterranean sea, but it remained uncredited and undescribed.
Invitations to contemplate
why did I collect this image
What if we see differently?
This image is part of the collection
This image is part of the collection Opacity of Images
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Well, where does the Danube has its origin?
It seems that, against the age-old controversies between specialists, it stems from the source of the river Breg, but the water that irrigates the meadow from which the Breg rises comes from a pipe, planted straight into the ground.
An old woman who l …
