"The Metabolic Sublime" by Joana Moll

We assume the connections between things to be obvious, although, as Graham Harman said, "not everything is connected". Thus, it is important to trace, on an ongoing basis, the relationships that exist between things to gain a complex understanding of the world. In that sense, a positive demystification of things, of their assemblages and even their biases, is a crucial exercise to detach ourselves from the rigid and open windows to new silences, noises, impossibilities, and possibilities. The linearity with which we face different contingencies as a walking body often blinds us to the simultaneous realities embedded in everything that surrounds us, even in what builds us. From an anthropocentric perspective, the phenomenon of the inner child, a concept born within the framework of Gestalt therapy, is a good example. The inner child "is the most vulnerable and sensitive psychological structure of our self". Far from being an abstract, metaphorical construction, in many occasions the inner child determines our response to specific situations, becoming more evident when reliving traumatic episodes. In this sense, the inner child is one thing, has agency and in turn, modifies other agencies, affecting realities simultaneously. Thus, the Metabolic Sublime is drawn as an assemblage of things, of non-linear and simultaneous agencies at the margin of anthropocentric classification systems, outlining the possibility of thinking outside the rigid, the patterned. It opens the door not only to trace the connections that exist (or not) between things, but to admire them from the constant fluctuations of the empty-thing. In this way, the Metabolic Sublime becomes an antidote to the obvious and opens windows to the possible.

Joana Moll